1NC
1NC – Disad
Russian Economy will not collapse – stable now
Adomanis 8/27 – (2013, Mark Contributor for Forbes Magazine,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2013/08/27/do-you-think-russias-economy-is-doomed-the-bond-marketdoesnt-agree/) rss
Earlier this year I wrote several articles pushing back against some particularly alarmist interpretations of Russia’s economy. After
predicting Russia’s imminent implosion no less than 6 or 7 different times over the past decade I’m genuinely amazed that Owen
Matthews wasn’t a little more gunshy in saying that 2013 was definitely the year in which everything would come crashing down
around the Kremlin’s ears, but you really do not need to search very long or hard to find people who are extremely disdainful of
Russia’s economic performance and of the “obliviousness” and general stupidity of its policy makers. ¶ It’s true that Russia’s economy
is slowing down and its also true that the authorities don’t have any easy choices: monetary easing will likely spark inflation, and the
state’s ability to engage in fiscal pump-priming is highly constrained. Growth over the next few years will be decidedly sub-par when
compared to the 2000 boom years and even to the modest 2010-12 bounce back from the Great Recession.¶ However, if Russia
really was rapidly approaching an economic dead-end, if there was increasingly recognition that its model was not
going to survive, you would expect to see the Russian government’s borrowing costs go up. Yes Russia’s
stock of government debt is not particularly large (at only around 10% of GDP) but if the market came to an understanding that the
economic situation was going to get a lot worse in the not too distant future then investors would demand higher returns. Demand for
Russian debt would go down, and the interest rates on that debt would go up. Economics 101. ¶ And that’s exactly what happened
during the worst days of the 2008-09 crisis: Russia’s borrowing costs skyrocketed from around 7% to almost 11% because there were
serious, and perfectly understandable, doubts about Russia’s ability to weather the economic storm. ¶ Since the crisis ended,
however, the interest rates on long-term Russian government securities haven’t done much –
they’ve bounced around within a relatively narrow range and are at about the same level now that they were back in 2006. This
would seem, to me at least, to reflect market expectations of business as usual: not overly-rapid economic
growth, but certainly not some sort of spectacular collapse.¶ Is it possible that the bond market is wrong? Sure. It’s possible that the
market is wrong just as it is possible that Putin will be overthrown before the end of the year or that I will win the lottery. Almost
anything is possible. But it certainly does not seem likely that the bond market would be so studiously immune to a mounting
economic catastrophe. What that chart says to me is that things will continue in pretty much same vein, and that there aren’t going to
be any big changes one way or another.¶ Russia’s economy might not be performing particularly well at the
moment, but there’s very little evidence that it’s going to come screeching to a halt. So if like many
Westerners you’re eagerly waiting for Putin to be ousted by a crippling economic crisis, you’re going to be waiting for a long time.
Plan solves stability - this bolsters the oil industry
Lugar, 12 – (Richard Lugar, Senator from Indiana. December 21, 2012. “OIL, MEXICO, AND THE
TRANSBOUNDARY AGREEMENT,” http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/)//SDL
Congressional attention to the Mexican energy situation is critical¶ for understanding bilateral issues between our countries and ¶ for
consideration of U.S. energy security. The
United States has a¶ profound interest in economic
prosperity and political stability in¶ Mexico, and energy is foundational to both interests. Oil is vital for¶
the Mexican federal budget, underwriting both social programs and¶ law and order, and the oil industry is an
important aspect of broader¶ economic activity. Stability and growth, or lack thereof, in
Mexico’s¶ oil and gas sector can directly impact issues of bilateral concern.
Oil prices key to Russia’s economy – over half of government
revenue
Schuman, 12 – (Michael Schuman, Associated Press Staff Writer for Times.
July 5, 2012. “Why Vladimir
Putin Needs Higher Oil Prices,” http://business.time.com/2012/07/05/why-vladimir-putin-needs-higher-oilprices/)//SDL
But Vladimir Putin is not one of them. The
economy that the Russian President has built not only runs
on oil, but runs on oil priced extremely high. Falling oil prices means rising problems for Russia –
both for the strength of its economic performance, and possibly, the strength of Putin himself.¶ Despite the fact
that Russia has been labeled one of the world’s most promising emerging markets, often mentioned in the same breath as China and
India, the Russian economy is actually quite different from the others. While India gains growth benefits from
an expanding population, Russia, like much of Europe, is aging; while economists fret over China’s excessive dependence on
investment, Russia badly needs more of it. Most of all, Russia
is little more than an oil state in disguise. The
country is the largest producer of oil in the world (yes, bigger even than Saudi Arabia), and Russia’s
dependence on crude has been increasing. About a decade ago, oil and gas accounted for less than half of
Russia’s exports; in recent years, that share has risen to two-thirds. Most of all, oil provides more than half
of the federal government’s revenues.¶ What’s more, the economic model Putin has designed in
Russia relies heavily not just on oil, but high oil prices. Oil lubricates the Russian economy
by making possible the increases in government largesse that have fueled Russian consumption. Budget spending reached 23.6% of
GDP in the first quarter of 2012, up from 15.2% four years earlier. What that means is Putin
requires a higher oil price
to meet his spending requirements today than he did just a few years ago.¶ Research firm Capital Economics figures
that the government budget balanced at an oil price of $55 a barrel in 2008, but that now it balances at close to $120. Oil prices
today have fallen far below that, with Brent near $100 and U.S. crude less than $90. The farther oil prices fall,
the more pressure is placed on Putin’s budget, and the harder it is for him to keep
spreading oil wealth to the greater population through the government. With a large swath of the populace angered by his reelection to the nation’s presidency in March, and protests erupting on the streets of Moscow, Putin can ill-afford a
significant blow to the economy, or his ability to use government resources to firm up his popularity.
Russian economic decline causes nuclear war
Filger 9 (Sheldon, Author – Huffington Post, “Russian Economy Faces Disastrous Free Fall Contraction”,
http://www.globaleconomiccrisis.com/blog/archives/356)
In Russia, historically, economic health and political stability are intertwined to a degree that is rarely encountered in other
major industrialized economies. It was the economic stagnation of the former Soviet Union that led to its political downfall. Similarly,
Medvedev and Putin, both intimately acquainted with their nation's history, are unquestionably alarmed at the prospect that Russia's
economic crisis will endanger the nation's political stability, achieved at great cost after years of chaos following the demise of
the Soviet Union. Already, strikes and protests are occurring among rank and file workers facing unemployment or non-payment of
their salaries. Recent polling demonstrates that the once supreme popularity ratings of Putin and Medvedev are eroding rapidly.
Beyond the political elites are the financial oligarchs, who have been forced to deleverage, even unloading their yachts and executive
jets in a desperate attempt to raise cash. Should the Russian economy deteriorate to the point where economic collapse is not
out of the question, the impact will go far beyond the obvious accelerant such an outcome would be for the Global Economic
Crisis . There is a geopolitical dimension that is even more relevant then the economic context. Despite its economic vulnerabilities
and perceived decline from superpower status, Russia remains one of only two nations on earth with a nuclear arsenal of
sufficient scope and capability to destroy the world as we know it. For that reason, it is not only President Medvedev and Prime
Minister Putin who will be lying awake at nights over the prospect that a national economic crisis can transform itself into a
virulent and destabilizing social and political upheaval . It just may be possible that U.S. President Barack Obama's national
security team has already briefed him about the consequences of a major economic meltdown in Russia for the peace of the world.
After all, the most recent national intelligence estimates put out by the U.S. intelligence community have already concluded that the
Global Economic Crisis represents the greatest national security threat to the United States, due to its facilitating political instability in
the world. During the years Boris Yeltsin ruled Russia, security forces responsible for guarding the nation's nuclear arsenal went
without pay for months at a time, leading to fears that desperate personnel would illicitly sell nuclear weapons to terrorist
organizations. If the current economic crisis in Russia were to deteriorate much further, how secure would the Russian
nuclear arsenal remain? It may be that the financial impact of the Global Economic Crisis is its least dangerous
consequence.
1NC – Kritik
The 1AC’s Orthodox IR’s atomistic approach to global problems makes
extinction inevitable
-
Discourse uses a selection bias and is seen in a historical context that makes seem true – this
causes a global reaction and trend towards violence
Orthodox IR fails to solve the problems of the 1AC because they re-create the drive for security
and the order that already exists
Their vision of international relations believes that violence can be a rational decision sometimes
which is not the case – this allows for acceptance which makes violence possible
Their solutions only address the symptoms not the root causes of violence which means they can
never solve – only continue the harm
EVEN IF their crisis scenarios are true it is still a reason to vote negative – it proves the current
order founded on their IR theory is unsustainable – try or die for moving away
Securitization forces a militarized response to solutions that could be solved by other means – this
neglects social justice and is a positive peace disad
Ahmed 12 Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and
Development (IPRD), an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at
the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and
the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society"
Global Change, Peace & Security Volume 23, Issue 3, 2011 Taylor Francis 3. From securitisation to
militarisation 3.1 Complicity
This analysis thus calls for a broader approach to environmental security based on retrieving the manner in
which political
actors construct discourses of 'scarcity' in response to ecological,
energy and economic crises (critical security studies) in the context of the historicallyspecific socio-political and geopolitical relations of domination by which their power is
constituted, and which are often implicated in the acceleration of these very crises
(historical sociology and historical materialism). Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR
approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively,
but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is
only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical
environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship
of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category
for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot
recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of
economics. Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour,
which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale
- in the very process of seeking security .85 In Cox's words, because positivist IR theory
'does not question the present order [it instead] has the effect of legitimising and
reifying it'.86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state
behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason -thus rationalising what are
clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode
state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence . Indeed, the
prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined
with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both
realism and
liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.
By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how
prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis
acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the
expansion of state/regime military-political power rather than any attempt to transform
root structural causes .88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform
through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a
vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted
progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the
international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to
accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to 'securitise'
them - and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation
responsible for magnified global insecurity. 'Securitisation' refers
to a 'speech act' - an act of
labelling - whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential
threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are
within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of
'security', therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-
making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself . Far
from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper 'dual'
structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary
extra-legal military-police measures in purported response to an existential danger. The
problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such
levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very
global crises generating 'new security challenges', and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All
that remains to examine is on the 'surface' of the international system (geopolitical
competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which
are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the
biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are
comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global
systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR
theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with
the expanded application of existing theory to 'new security challenges' such as
'low-intensity' intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty ; environmental
degradation ; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking;
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism .91 Although
the majority of such 'new security challenges' are non-military in origin - whether their referents are states
or individuals - the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means
they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power. 92 In other
words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not
as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally
unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to
radicalise the exertion of their military-political capacities to maintain existing power
structures, to keep the lid on .93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could
mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is
presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies
the state's adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context
of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to
problematise potentially recalcitrant populations - rationalising violence toward them as a
control mechanism. Consequently, for the most part, the policy implications of orthodox IR
approaches involve a redundant conceptualisation of global systemic crises purely as
potential 'threat-multipliers' of traditional security issues such as 'political instability
around the world, the collapse of governments and the creation of terrorist safe havens' .
Climate change will serve to amplify the threat of international terrorism, particularly in regions with large
populations and scarce resources. The US Army, for instance, depicts climate change as a
'stress-multiplier' that will 'exacerbate tensions' and 'complicate American foreign policy'; while
the EU perceives it as a 'threat-multiplier which exacerbates existing trends, tensions and instability'.95 In
practice, this
generates an excessive preoccupation not with the causes of global crisis
acceleration and how to ameliorate them through structural transformation,
but with their
purportedly inevitable impacts , and how to prepare for them by controlling problematic
populations. Paradoxically, this 'securitisation' of global crises does not render us safer .
Instead, by
necessitating more violence , while inhibiting preventive action , it
guarantees greater insecurity . Thus, a recent US Department of Defense report explores the future of international conflict up to 2050. It warns
of 'resource competition induced by growing populations and expanding economies', particularly due to a projected 'youth bulge' in the South, which 'will consume ever increasing
amounts of food, water and energy'. This will prompt a 'return to traditional security threats posed by emerging near-peers as we compete globally for depleting natural resources
and overseas markets'. Finally, climate change will 'compound' these stressors by generating humanitarian crises, population migrations and other complex emergencies.96 A
similar study by the US Joint Forces Command draws attention to the danger of global energy depletion through to 2030. Warning of ‘the dangerous vulnerabilities the growing
energy crisis presents’, the report concludes that ‘The implications for future conflict are ominous.’97 Once again, the subject turns to demographics: ‘In total, the world will add
approximately 60 million people each year and reach a total of 8 billion by the 2030s’, 95 per cent accruing to developing countries, while populations in developed countries slow
or decline. ‘Regions such as the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, where the youth bulge will reach over 50% of the population, will possess fewer inhibitions about engaging
in conflict.’98 The assumption is that regions which happen to be both energy-rich and Muslim-majority will also be sites of violent conflict due to their rapidly growing
populations. A British Ministry of Defence report concurs with this assessment, highlighting an inevitable ‘youth bulge’ by 2035, with some 87 per cent of all people under the age
of 25 inhabiting developing countries. In particular, the Middle East population will increase by 132 per cent and sub-Saharan Africa by 81 per cent. Growing resentment due to
‘endemic unemployment’ will be channelled through ‘political militancy, including radical political Islam whose concept of Umma, the global Islamic community, and resistance
to capitalism may lie uneasily in an international system based on nation-states and global market forces’. More strangely, predicting an intensifying global divide between a superrich elite, the middle classes and an urban under-class, the report warns: ‘The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape
the securitisation of global crisis leads not only to the
problematisation of particular religious and ethnic groups in foreign regions of geopolitical
transnational processes in their own class interest.’99 Thus,
interest, but
potentially extends this problematisation to any social group which might
challenge prevailing global political economic structures across racial, national and class lines. The previous examples
illustrate how secur-itisation paradoxically generates insecurity by reifying a process of
militarization against social groups that are constructed as external to the prevailing
geopolitical and economic order. In other words, the internal reductionism, fragmentation and
compartmentalisation that plagues orthodox theory and policy reproduces precisely these characteristics
by externalising global crises from one another, externalising states from one another, externalising the inter-state system
from its biophysical environment, and externalising new social groups as dangerous 'outsiders*. Hence, a simple discursive
analysis of state militarisation and the construction of new "outsider* identities is insufficient to
understand the causal dynamics driving the process of 'Otherisation'. As Doug Stokes points out,
the Western state preoccupation with the ongoing military struggle against international
terrorism reveals an underlying 'discursive complex ", where representations about
terrorism and non-Western populations are premised on 'the construction of stark boundaries*
that 'operate to exclude and include*. Yet these exclusionary discourses are 'intimately
bound up with political and economic processes', such as strategic interests in
proliferating military bases in the Middle East , economic interests in control of oil , and the
wider political goal of 'maintaining American hegemony * by dominating a
resource-rich region critical for global capitalism.100 But even this does not go far enough, for
arguably the construction of certain hegemonic discourses is mutually constituted by
these geopolitical, strategic and economic interests — exclusionary discourses are
politically constituted. New conceptual developments in genocide studies throw further light on this in terms of the
concrete socio-political dynamics of securitisation processes. It is now widely recognised, for instance, that the distinguishing criterion
of genocide is not the pre-existence of primordial groups, one of which destroys the other on the basis of a preeminence in
bureaucratic military-political power. Rather, genocide is the intentional attempt to destroy a particular social group that has been
socially constructed as different. As Hinton observes, genocides precisely constitute a process of 'othering* in which an imagined
community becomes reshaped so that previously 'included* groups become 'ideologically recast' and dehumanised as threatening and
dangerous outsiders, be it along ethnic, religious, political or economic lines — eventually
legitimising their
annihilation .102 In other words, genocidal violence is inherently rooted in a prior and
ongoing ideological process, whereby exclusionary group categories are innovated,
constructed and 'Otherised' in accordance with a specific socio-political programme. The very
process of identifying and classifying particular groups as outside the boundaries of an imagined community of 'inclusion*, justifying
exculpatory violence toward them, is itself a political act without which genocide would be impossible.1 3 This recalls Lemkin's
recognition that the intention
to destroy a group is integrally connected with a wider sociopolitical project - or colonial project — designed to perpetuate the political, economic, cultural and
ideological relations of the perpetrators in the place of that of the victims, by interrupting
or eradicating their means of social reproduction. Only by interrogating the dynamic
and origins of this programme to uncover the social relations from which that programme
derives can the emergence of genocidal intent become explicable. Building on this insight,
Semelin demonstrates that the process of exclusionary social group construction invariably derives from political processes emerging
from deep-seated sociopolitical crises that undermine the prevailing framework of civil order and social norms; and which can, for one
social group, be seemingly resolved by projecting anxieties onto a new 'outsider' group deemed to be somehow responsible for crisis
conditions. It is
in this context that various forms of mass violence , which may or may not
eventually culminate in actual genocide , can become legitimised as contributing to
the resolution of crises .105
Reject the affirmatives securitized discourse – rejection of securitized
rhetoric is necessary to foster change
-
-
Deconstruction of epistemology is a prior question – elites have created the current world order
which shapes our knowledge production, discourse, and understanding of the world – because all
actions depend on our understanding it must be correct for other actions to be considered correct –
this makes alt solvency irrelevant because we will never know the truth until we reject their vision
of the world
Citizen Action is important at the level of the speech act – even if it doesn’t create a movement
calling out bad discourse can prevent it in the future
No inevitability claims – the US didn’t always securitize and there is not a reason it needs to if
people change
The state fails – it militarizes all solutions and will co-opt the alternative empirical historical
examples prove
Alt solves – the red scare, and the withdrawl of Vietnam shows how grassroots pressure can force
action
LAL 08, (Prerna P. Lal, J.D. in law, freelance writer, “Deconstructing the National Security State: Towards a New
Framework of Analysis,” POSC 4910: Senior Seminar, http://prernalal.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/cssdeconstructing-the-nat-sec-state.pdf , KENTUCKY)
Critical theory does not offer simple one-shot solutions to the problems created by the
neo-realist state and elitist conception of security . To give simple answers would be a
performativity contradiction , especially after criticizing realism for being
intellectually rigid for believing in objective truth. In other words, there are no
alternatives; just alternative modes of understanding . However, using the poststructuralist
Foucaultian analysis that discourse is power, we can move towards deconstructing the power of
the state and elites to securitize using their own tool: discourse . The elites who control
the meaning of security and define it in terms that are appropriate to their interests hold
tremendous power in the national security state. As Foucault astutely observed, “ the exercise
of power is always deeply entwined with the production of knowledge and
discourse ” (Dalby 1998, 4). For too long, language has been used against us to create our
reality , thereby obfuscating our lens of the world, depriving us from an objective
search for truth and knowledge. The history of colonized people shows how the construction
of language defined and justified their oppressed status. In a way, we are colonized
through discursive practices and subjected to the reality that the state wants us to
see. However, definitions belong to the definer, and it is high time that we questioned and
defined our own reality . Thus , citizen action is critical to questioning and
deconstructing the national security state and taking away its power to define our
security. In On Security, Pearl Alice Marsh (1995, 126) advances the idea of a grassroots statecraft
that is defined as “challenging foreign policy of government through contending
discursive and speech acts.” This calls for pitting the values of civil society against the
state establishment and challenging the American statecraft’s freedom to cast issues and
events in a security or militarized framework. The United States has not always been a
national security state and neither does it have to maintain that hegemonic and oppressive
status in order to exist. It is critical to remember that fundamental changes in our
institutions and structures of power do not occur from the top; they originate from
the bottom. History is case in point. Citizen action was critical to ending the Red Scare
and the Vietnam War, as the American people realized the ludicrousness of framing
Vietnam as a security issue, which led to the fall of the Second New Deal, the deaths of
thousands of American soldiers and a financial cost that we are still shouldering. In the
end, what they need to be secured from and how, is a question best left up to individual
Americans and subsequently, civil society. Thus, grassroots citizen action
performatively makes individuals the referent subject of security as people would call for
the demilitarization and desecuritization of issues that are contrary and irrelevant to
human security. There is hope for the future and practical application of critical theory
ininternational relations. As Robert Lipschutz (2000, 61) concludes in After Authority:War, Peace, and
Global Politics in the 21st Century, “it was the existence of the Otheracross the border that gave national
security its power and authority; it is thedisappearance of the border that has vanquished that power.”
Britain, France andGermany set aside their historical enmities and became part of a European
community,which has formed a new collective identity and security across borders. Cold War rivals
that almost annihilated the world are now friends in the “war against terror.” The apartheid
regime in South Africa did collapse eventually. In the past two years, India andPakistan have been
moving towards a more peaceful future that also includes fighting the“war against terror” together. While
nation-states that were previously hostile to eachother have united to be hostile towards other states, it is
not overly idealist to suggest thatwith each new friendship and alliance, there is one less foe and one
less Other. The world is not stable and stagnant, existing in an anarchic, nasty and brutish
framework in which states have to endlessly bargain for their self-interest, as realists
would like us to believe. On the contrary , i nternational r elations and the boundaries
constructed by the state are subject to change and ever-transitioning, which presents
a compelling case for critical theory as a more realistic framework through which
we can view i nternational r elations.Therefore, our ultimate search for security does not lie in securing
the state from the threat of the enemy across the border, but in removing the state as the referent object of
security and moving towards human emancipation.
1NC – Politics
Syria almost caused a shutdown – need Obama’s leadership
and focus in Congress now to avoid a shutdown
Sink, 9/20 – (Justin Sink, Associated Press Staff Writer for The Hill.
“White House seeks Hill leadership
meetings to avoid shutdown,” http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/323625-white-house-seeks-hill-meetings-toavoid-shutdown)//SDL
The White House is attempting to organize a meeting with congressional leaders next week ahead of the
deadline for lawmakers to strike a deal to keep the federal government open.¶ ¶ The president and congressional leaders
have not yet been able to iron out a specific date and time, although it will have to come in the latter half of the week. President
Obama will be in New York on Monday and Tuesday to attend the United Nations General Assembly. ¶ The White House
hopes to use the meeting to convince lawmakers to strike a deal on the federal budget, with a pair of
rapidly approaching deadlines threatening the nation's economic stability. ¶ If lawmakers do not strike
a budget deal before the end of the month, the government would shut down all non-essential services. A few weeks
later, the government is expected to hit the debt ceiling if Congress cannot agree to raise the borrowing limit.¶ But
Republicans on Capitol Hill expressed skepticism that the meeting would have any effect on a contentious budgeting process.¶ “The
White House has indicated it would like to convene a meeting with congressional leaders," said
Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). ¶ "The Speaker will attend, of course, but given that the
president has said he won’t discuss the debt limit with Congress, we’re not sure why it’s even taking place.” ¶ Relations between
Obama and Boehner have been severely strained since the failure of talks to reach a grand bargain on the debt in
2011. Earlier this week, the Speaker questioned why Obama was willing to work with the Russians to
find a diplomatic solution in Syria but not with Republicans over the debt limit.¶ The same day, Boehner
said he had no intention of returning to the one-on-one grand bargain talks he pursued with Obama in 2011. ¶ On Friday, White House
press secretary Jay Carney said there was " no
doubt" the president would "be in conversations with
congressional leaders in the coming days about the need to deal with these pressing deadlines."¶
But Carney would not reveal who Obama hoped to meet with, or what format those meetings might take. ¶ "I can only say that you can
he’ll have conversations with leaders in Congress about these looming deadlines and
about the need for Congress to do the right thing, make sure they don't shut down the government
and make sure they don't default," he said. "I don't have any more details for you."
expect that
The plan would trade off with Congress’s ability to avert the
shutdown - GOP has momentum and will, but they need
literally every hour to get it done
Frank James, 9-13-2013, “Congress Searches For A Shutdown-Free Future,” NPR,
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/09/13/221809062/congress-searches-for-a-shutdown-free-future
The only thing found Thursday seemed to be more time for negotiations and vote-wrangling.
Republican leaders recall how their party was blamed for the shutdowns of the mid-1990s and
earnestly want to avoid a repeat, especially heading into a midterm election year. Cantor alerted members
Thursday that during the last week of September, when they are supposed to be on recess, they will now most
likely find themselves in Washington voting on a continuing resolution to fund the government into October. It looks
like lawmakers will need every hour of that additional time. While talking to reporters Thursday, Boehner
strongly suggested that House Republicans weren't exactly coalescing around any one legislative strategy.
"There are a lot of discussions going on about how — about how to deal with the [continuing resolution] and the issue of 'Obamacare,'
and so we're continuing to work with our members," Boehner said. "There are a million options that are being
discussed by a lot of people. When we have something to report, we'll let you know."
Shutdown wrecks the economy
Yi Wu, 8-27-2013, “Government Shutdown 2013: Still a Terrible Idea,” PolicyMic,
http://www.policymic.com/articles/60837/government-shutdown-2013-still-a-terrible-idea
Around a third of House Republicans, many Tea Party-backed, sent a letter last week calling on Speaker John Boehner to reject any
spending bills that include implementation of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Some Senate Republicans
echo their House colleagues in pondering this extreme tactic, which is nothing other than a threat of government shutdown as
neither congressional Democrats nor President Obama would ever agree on a budget that abolishes the new health care law.
Unleashing this threat would amount to holding a large number of of the federal government's functions, including processing Social
Security checks and running the Centers for Disease Control, hostage in order to score partisan points. It would be an
irresponsible move inflicting enormous damage to the U.S. economy while providing no
benefit whatsoever for the country, and Boehner is rightly disinclined to pursue it. Government shutdowns are
deleterious to the economy. Two years ago in February 2011, a similar government shutdown was looming due to a budget
impasse, and a research firm estimated that quater's GDP growth would be reduced by 0.2 percentage points if the shutdown lasted a
week. After the budget is restored from the hypothetical shutdown, growth would only be "partially recouped," and
a longer shutdown would result in deeper slowdowns. Further, the uncertainties resulting from a shutdown
would also discourage business. A shutdown was avoided last-minute that year, unlike in 1995 during the Clinton
administration where it actually took place for four weeks and resulted in a 0.5 percentage-point dent in GDP growth. Billions of
dollars were cut from the budget, but neither Boehner nor the Republicans at the time were reckless enough to demand cancellation of
the entire health care reform enacted a year before.
Cross apply economic decline causes war
1NC – China
China-Mexico bilat increasing – we assume your collapse warrants
The Economist 6/6 – The Economist Magazine, (“Why has China snubbed Cuba and
Venezuela?”, Article Written for The Economist, 6/6/13,
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/06/economist-explains-3,
AW)
In terms of funding, Kevin Gallagher of Boston University says China has provided more
loans to Latin America since 2005 than the World Bank and the Inter-American
Development Bank combined. The visits to Mexico and Costa Rica may also represent a
pivot of sorts in terms of the type of economic relationship China has with Latin
America. Up until now, China has hoovered up the region’s commodities, importing soya,
copper, iron, oil and other raw materials, particularly from Brazil, Chile and Venezuela, while
flooding the region with its manufactured goods. But its relations with Mexico, a rival in lowcost manufacturing, have been frosty: China accounts for only about 0.05% of Mexican foreign
direct investment, and it exports ten times as much to Mexico as it imports. But as wages in
China have increased and high energy prices have raised the cost of shipping goods from
China to America, Beijing may be looking for bases such as Mexico and Costa Rica where it
can relocate Chinese factories and benefit from free-trade agreements with the United
States. This idea thrills the Mexican government , but does it pose an immediate threat to
Venezuela and Cuba? Probably not: China will continue to need their staunch ideological
support over issues like Taiwan, for one thing. But it does suggest that China’s economic
interest in the region is broadening, especially along the Pacific coast.
And the Plan ensures China is locked out of vital LA markets
Ray Mallén 6/28 – covers Latin America for the International Business Times (Patricia, “Latin America Increases Relations
With China: What Does That Mean For The US?” 6/28/13, http://www.ibtimes.com/latin-america-increases-relations-china-whatdoes-mean-us-1317981)//SJF
As if to confirm the declining hegemony of the United States as the ruling global superpower,
China is gaining influence in its hemispheric "backyard," Secretary of State John Kerry's unintentionally
insulting designation for Latin America. China has had its sights on Latin America for the past decade and is now positioning
itself as a competitive trade partner in the region. The populous, rapidly developing Asian nation covets oil, soybeans and gold, of which
Latin America has plenty, and has been slowly but steadily increasing its presence and its trade with several countries there. The U.S., whose history of blocking outside political
influence in Latin America going back to the Monroe Doctrine, has been directing its attention elsewhere, as Michael Cerna of the China Research Center observed. “[The U.S.']
attention of late has been focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, and Latin America fell lower and lower on America’s list of priorities. China has been all too willing to fill any void,”
China increased its two-way trade with
Latin America by 660 percent, from $13 billion at the beginning of the 21st century to more than $120 billion nine years later. Latin American exports to
Cerna said. A Tale Of Two Trips: Latin America Reacts To Xi and Biden's Visits Between 2000 and 2009,
China reached $41.3 billion, almost 7 percent of the region's total exports. China’s share of the region’s trade was less than 10 percent in 2000; by 2009, the number had jumped to
As impressive as that growth is, the numbers still pale in comparison to the U.S.' stats in its
commercial relationship with Latin America. The U.S. still holds more than half of the total trade,
adding up to $560 billion in 2008. Notably, though, America’s trade participation in Latin America has remained
static, while China is closing the gap more and more each year -- having already surpassed the
U.S. in some countries, including powerhouse Brazil. Concomitant with this burgeoning interest from the Far East, Latin America is
undergoing an economic rebirth. After decades of devastating economic crises, the region is experiencing unprecedented growth: On average, annual GDP growth
for Latin American countries will be 3.7 percent this year, according to United Nations estimates, almost double the
average for the rest of the world. That has prompted several countries to form quasi-governmental entities to further promote the progress of the region.
12 percent.
One such entity is the recently formed Pacific Alliance. Born with the specific goal of increasing relations with Asia, its members include Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Peru,
which together represent half of the region’s total exports and 35 percent of its GDP. In a meeting in Colombian capital Bogotá last month, the Pacific Alliance signed an
agreement to open its member countries' economies to Asian markets; the U.S., despite an invitation, did not attend. Though a recent trip to the region by Vice President Joe Biden
seems to run counter to the Pacific Alliance snub, China’s President Xi Jinping has also visited recently, and likewise met with Latin American leaders, illustrating how the two
global powers are going after the same prize. Biden traveled to Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago and Brazil in May, with the last leg of his trip coinciding with the beginning of
jumping to Costa Rica and Mexico. Both leaders met with several Latin American presidents and discussed trade and
Xi’s trip was the first visit from a Chinese official to the
region in almost a decade. Trinidad and Tobago’s main newspaper, Newsday, called the visit a “historic occasion” and a “visit from China to a good friend.”
Xi’s in Trinidad, before
cooperation. The outcomes of their trips were very different, however.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said she was committed to boosting relations with China and accepted an invitation to Beijing for November of this year. In Costa Rica, Xi
signed a $400 million loan to build a cross-country road and reaffirmed relations with its main ally in the region. Costa Rica is the only country in Latin America that sides with
Even more significant was Xi’s visit to Mexico.
exico wants closer
trade relations with China, with whom it has a gap of $45 billion in export and import -- an
important development considering that Mexico is, for now, America's biggest trade partner in
the world. Biden’s visit was not as successful. His meeting in Trinidad and Tobago was called “brutal and tense” by Persad-Bissessar, and Colombian journalist Andrés
China in the mainland-Taiwanese dispute and does not recognize the island as a nation.
President Enrique Peña Nieto welcomed his Chinese counterpart, whom he had visited in Beijing in April, and made his intentions clear: M
Oppenheimer deemed the trip a sympathy visit after Secretary John Kerry called Latin America “Washington’s backyard” in a much-berated slip last April. While Biden had
Perhaps the biggest development in China’s
investment in the area is the recent decision by the Nicaraguan congress to allow a Chinese
company to build a canal through the country. Although still in the proposal stages, the project would bring
profound change to the geopolitics of the region -- and even the world. If built, the canal could
significantly affect commerce through the Panama Canal, which, though it is now part of
Panama's domain, was built by the U.S. and remains a symbol of the nation's historical
dominance in the region. That dominance is in decline. After decades of uncontested U.S.
influence in the region, some Latin American leaders have started making decidedly antiAmerican policies. The most notable was the late Venezuelan Comandante Hugo Chávez, who was very vocal about his disdain for the U.S., but he is far from the
pleasant meetings in Rio and Bogotá, no agreements were signed during his trip.
only one. Bolivia's President Evo Morales, for instance, kicked out USAID after Kerry's verbal slip, and has gone so far as to ban Coca-Cola from the country. But now it's
Ecuador bumping heads with its northern neighbor, mostly in regard to Ecuador granting entry to NSA-secrets leaker Edward Snowden. President Rafael Correa openly said that
they would welcome the whistle-blower because he was a "free man," no matter what the U.S. said. Disagreements between the governments have led to the cancellation of a
Beyond the lack of understanding with its former
main trade partner, why is Latin America so smitten with China? Kevin Gallagher, a professor of international
relations at Boston University, says China speaks to the region’s newfound confidence. “China is offering
attractive deals to Latin American economies while the United States continues to lecture and
dictate,” Gallagher wrote for The Globalist. “For too long, the United States has relied on a rather imperial mechanism,
just telling Latin America what it needs,” he added. “Compare that to China’s approach: It offers Latin America
what it wants.” Gallagher argued that the U.S.’ biggest offer to Latin America is the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, which offers access to the U.S. market on three conditions: deregulate financial
markets, adopt intellectual property provisions that give preferences to U.S. firms, and allow U.S.
firms to sue governments for violating any of its conditions. China, on the other hand, has been providing more financing to
special trade agreement, which Ecuador has called "an instrument of blackmail."
Latin America than the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the U.S. Export-Import Bank combined since 2003, with no previous conditions and very few
Latin America is very sensitive to any notions of conditionality due to painful past
experiences with the IMF and the World Bank,” Gallagher said. “China makes sure that its policy is not
based on conditionalities.” Gallagher said the U.S. should awake from its past slumber and stop taking Latin America for granted. Shlomo Ben-Ami, vice
strings attached. “
president of the Toledo International Center for Peace and former Israeli foreign minister, takes a different stance. He argues that China's advancement in the region does not
automatically equate with American loss of preeminence. U.S. exports to Latin America continue to rise (by 94 percent over the past six years), as do imports (87 percent in the
same period), and America continues to be the biggest foreign investor in the area. Perhaps even more crucial are America's cultural and historical ties to the region, Ben-Ami said.
“Given the extraordinary growth of Latinos’ influence in the U.S., it is almost inconceivable that America could lose its unique status in the region to China,” he said. Still,
Gallagher and Ben-Ami agree that the U.S. needs to step up, both economically and diplomatically, to compete with new influences in a part of the world that was until recently
Gone are the days when military muscle and the politics of subversion
could secure U.S. influence -- in Latin America or anywhere else,” Ben-Ami said. “It is high time for the
U.S. government to undertake a true rethink of its economic policy toward Latin America,” Gallagher
observed. “Very soon, it might be too late.”
widely considered America’s domain. “
Chinese investment in Latin America key to economic growth
and regime stability
Ellis 11 — R. Evan Ellis, professor of national security studies, modeling, gaming, and simulation with the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National
Defense University, with a research focus on Latin America’s relationships with external actors, including China, Russia, and Iran, Ph.D. in Political Science (“Chinese Soft Power
in Latin America: A Case Study, Joint Force Quarterly, A Publication of the National Defense University Press, Issue 60, 1st Quarter 2011, Available Online:
http://www.ndu.edu/press/lib/images/jfq-60/JFQ60_85-91_Ellis.pdf, Accessed: 05/22/2013)
Access to Latin American Markets. Latin
American markets are becoming increasingly valuable for Chinese
companies because they allow the PRC to expand and diversify its export base at a time when economic
growth is slowing in traditional markets such as the United States and Europe. The region has also proven an
effective market for Chinese efforts to sell more sophisticated, higher value added products in sectors seen as
strategic, such as automobiles, appliances, computers and telecommunication equipment, and aircraft. In expanding access for its products through free
trade accords with countries such as Chile, Peru, and Costa Rica, and penetrating markets in Latin American countries with existing manufacturing
sectors such as Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, the PRC has often had to overcome resistance by organized and often politically well-connected
established interests in those nations. In doing so, the hopes of access to Chinese markets and investments among key groups of businesspeople and
government officials in those nations have played a key role in the political will to overcome the resistance. In Venezuela, it was said that the prior
Chinese ambassador to Venezuela, Zheng Tuo, was one of the few people in the country who could call President Chávez on the telephone and get an
instant response if an issue arose regarding a Chinese company. Protection of Chinese Investments in and Trade Flows from the Region. At times, China
has applied more explicit pressures to induce Latin America to keep its markets open to Chinese goods. It has specifically protested measures by the
Argentine and Mexican governments that it has seen as protectionist: and, in the case of Argentina, as informal retaliation, China began enforcing a
longstanding phytosanitary regulation, causing almost $2 billion in lost soy exports and other damages for Argentina.14 China has also used its economic
weight to help secure major projects on preferential terms. In the course of negotiating a $1.7 billion loan deal for the Coco Coda Sinclair Hydroelectric
plant in Ecuador, the ability of the Chinese bidder SinoHidro to self-finance 85 percent of the projects through Chinese banks helped it to work around
the traditional Ecuadorian requirement that the project have a local partner. Later, the Ecuadorian government publicly and bitterly broke off negotiations
with the Chinese, only to return to the bargaining table 2 months later after failing to find satisfactory alternatives. In Venezuela, the Chávez government
agreed, for example, to accept half of the $20 billion loaned to it by the PRC in Chinese currency, and to use part of that currency to buy 229,000
consumer appliances from the Chinese manufacturer Haier for resale to the Venezuelan people. In another deal, the PRC loaned Venezuela $300 million
to start a regional airline, but as part of the deal, required Venezuela to purchase the planes from a Chinese company.15 Protection of Chinese Nationals.
As with the United States and other Western countries, as China becomes more involved in business and other operations in Latin America, an increasing
number of its nationals will be vulnerable to hazards common to the region, such as kidnapping, crime, protests, and related problems. The heightened
presence of Chinese petroleum companies in the northern jungle region of Ecuador, for example, has been associated with a series of problems, including
the takeover of an oilfield operated by the Andes petroleum consortium in Tarapoa in November 2006, and protests in Orellana related to a labor dispute
with the Chinese company Petroriental in 2007 that resulted in the death of more than 35 police officers and forced the declaration of a national state of
emergency. In 2004, ethnic Chinese shopkeepers in Valencia and Maracay, Venezuela, became the focus of violent protests associated with the
Venezuelan recall referendum. As such incidents increase, the PRC will need to rely increasingly on a combination of goodwill and fear to deter action
against its personnel, as well as its influence with governments of the region, to resolve such problems when they occur. Blocking the Consolidation of
U.S. Influence in the Region and Its Institutions. The
rise of China is intimately tied to the global economy through
trade, financial, and information flows, each of which is highly dependent on global institutions and cooperation. Because of
this, some within the PRC leadership see the country’s sustained growth and development , and thus
the stability of the regime , threatened if an actor such as the United States is able to limit that
cooperation or block global institutions from supporting Chinese interests . In Latin
America, China’s attainment of observer status in the OAS in 2004 and its acceptance into the IADB in 2009 were
efforts to obtain a seat at the table in key regional institutions, and to keep them from being used “against” Chinese
interests. In addition, the PRC has leveraged hopes of access to Chinese markets by Chile, Peru, and Costa Rica to
secure bilateral free trade agreements, whose practical effect is to move Latin America away from
a U.S.-dominated trading block
(the Free Trade Area of the Americas) in
which the PRC would have been
disadvantaged.
Collpase causes social unrest – results in great power war
Kane 01 – [Thomas Kane, PhD in Security Studies from the University of Hull & Lawrence Serewicz, Autumn,
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/01autumn/Kane.htm]
Despite China's problems with its food supply, the Chinese do not
appear to be in danger of
widespread starvation. Nevertheless, one cannot rule out the prospect entirely, especially if the
earth's climate actually is getting warmer. The consequences of general famine in a country with over a billion
people clearly would be catastrophic. The effects of oil shortages and industrial stagnation would be less lurid,
but economic collapse would endanger China's political stability whether that collapse came with a
bang or a whimper. PRC society has become dangerously fractured. As the coastal cities grow richer and more
cosmopolitan while the rural inland provinces grow poorer, the political interests of the two regions become ever less
compatible. Increasing the prospects for division yet further, Deng Xiaoping's administrative reforms have strengthened
regional potentates at the expense of central authority. As Kent Calder observes, In part, this change [erosion of power
at the center] is a conscious devolution, initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1991 to outflank conservative opponents of
economic reforms in Beijing nomenclature. But devolution has fed on itself, spurred by the natural desire of local
authorities in the affluent and increasingly powerful coastal provinces to appropriate more and more of the fruits of
growth to themselves alone.[ 49] Other social and economic developments deepen the rifts in Chinese society. The onechild policy, for instance, is disrupting traditional family life, with unknowable consequences for Chinese mores and
social cohesion.[ 50] As families resort to abortion or infanticide to ensure that their one child is a son, the population
may come to include an unprecedented preponderance of young, single men. If common gender prejudices have any
basis in fact, these males are unlikely to be a source of social stability. Under these circumstances, China is vulnerable
to unrest of many kinds. Unemployment or severe hardship, not to mention actual starvation, could easily
trigger popular uprisings. Provincial leaders might be tempted to secede, perhaps openly or
perhaps by quietly ceasing to obey Beijing's directives. China's leaders, in turn, might adopt drastic
measures to forestall such developments. If faced with internal strife, supporters of China's existing
regime may return to a more overt form of communist dictatorship. The PRC has, after all, oscillated between
experimentation and orthodoxy continually throughout its existence. Spectacular examples include Mao's Hundred
Flowers campaign and the return to conventional Marxism-Leninism after the leftist experiments of the Cultural
Revolution, but the process continued throughout the 1980s, when the Chinese referred to it as the "fang-shou cycle."
(Fang means to loosen one's grip; shou means to tighten it.)[ 51] If order broke down, the Chinese would not be the
only people to suffer. Civil unrest in the PRC would disrupt trade relationships, send refugees
flowing across borders, and force outside powers to consider intervention. If different
countries chose to intervene on different sides, China's struggle could lead to major war.
In a less apocalyptic but still grim scenario, China's government might try to ward off its
demise by attacking adjacent countries.
1NC – Counterplan
The European Union will negotiate as an economic partner
with Mexico in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
EU solves – engagement with Mexico is successful and allows
for Europe engagement with Latin America at large.
Secchi 08
Carlo Secchi, spring-xx-2008, Professor Senior, Department of Policy Analysis and Public Management @ Bocconi
University, “Latin America is Europe’s next big missed business opportunity,”
http://www.europesworld.org/NewEnglish/Home_old/Article/tabid/191/ArticleType/ArticleView/ArticleID/21072/language/enUS/Default.aspx
Brazil and Mexico are the key Latin American countries. The EU’s association agreement with Mexico
is 10 years old , but it doesn’t yet have a strategic partnership with Brazil. This is partly because of the never-ending
negotiation process with Mercosur, the troubled Latin American customs union that is still incomplete. The EU is currently
negotiating trade liberalisation deals with all of Latin America’s regional blocs; as well as Mercosur, these are the Caribbean
Community, the Central America Common Market and the Andean Community. The EU therefore needs to urge its
Latin
American partners towards further integration. If they were to adopt a common “rule of origin”
for their products this would be an incentive to further liberalise their international trade , and
thus increase it. Full trade liberalisation in Latin America, although difficult to achieve, must be
made central to the European strategy. Greater trade openness would be beneficial for economic
growth. But even if tariffs and quotas are progressively reduced, trade flows may remain low if other trade costs remain high. EU
co-operation should be directed to lowering trade costs. The crucial issue is market access. Most Latin American
countries still get poor results from their export efforts towards Europe, the exceptions being raw materials
and energy sources. After the establishment of the EU-Chile free trade area, Chilean exports to the EU were substantially increased.
But in the case of EU-Mexico trade liberalisation, the growth of imports from the EU has exceeded the growth of exports to Europe,
resulting in a widening Mexican trade deficit with the EU. Ever since the 1999 Rio summit, the
E uropean U nion has
proclaimed that Latin America is a vital strategic political and economic partner. But a huge gap
has remained between its words and its actions. An abrupt change in the European approach is now needed if a
strategic bi-regional partnership is to be created. The European Commission apparently understands this. Although the EU does not
have a strategic partnership with Brazil, its intention is to push ahead with one as fast as possible. In mid-2007 the
Commission confirmed that it will be revisiting the EU’s 10-year dialogue with Mercosur, with the aim of giving new impetus to the
negotiations. But there is also a keen awareness that the EU’s hope for a special relationship with Brazil must not be allowed to hinder
regional integration in South America, or worsen asymmetries and imbalances within the bloc. If Latin America is to
become more important as a strategic partner for the EU in the global economy, and as a more
attractive market for European companies, European institutions must become more open to the
needs of countries in the region. The new start by the EU , focus ed on the two most important players, Brazil and
Mexico, could prove
a
promising
one, because of the “pull” effect it might have on the other countries. However,
this must be accompanied by measures to keep all Latin American countries on board.
Otherwise, Latin America may well prove to be Europe’s next missed business opportunity.
1NC – Trade/ Econ
No conflicts resulted from the recession – disproves the impact
Barnett 9—senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC (Thomas, The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis, 25
August 2009, http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules--security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx)
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of
scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression
leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China
and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how
globalization's first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the
international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by
GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed to the global recession. Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict
between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the
chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where
the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was
specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important
external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long
struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases, then, we see a most
familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist
movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v.
South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly
unrelated to global economic trends. And with the United States effectively tied down by its two ongoing major
interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleeding-into-Pakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has
been quite modest, both leading up to and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug
efforts in Latin America, the usual military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's
coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn, occasionally pressing the Chinese -unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising
and training local forces. So, to sum up: •No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of
urban riots last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); •The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in
all the usual places); •Not a single state-on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even
triggered); •No great improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new
nuclear powers (despite all that diplomacy); •A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's
acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and •No serious efforts by any rising great
power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role.
History is decided
Ferguson 6— Laurence A. Tisch prof of History at Harvard. William Ziegler of Business Administration at Harvard. MA and D.Phil from
Glasgow and Oxford (Niall, “The Next War of the World,” September/October 2006,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/09/the_next_war_of_the_world.html)
Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal chain in modern historiography
links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II. But that simple story
leaves too much out. Nazi Germany started the war in Europe only after its economy had recovered.
Not all the countries affected by the Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all such regimes
start wars of aggression. In fact, no general relationship between economics and conflict is discernible
for the century as a whole. Some wars came after periods of growth, others were the causes rather than the
consequences of economic catastrophe, and some severe economic crises were not followed by wars.
Robust studies prove
Miller 2k – Professor of Management, Ottawa (Morris, Poverty As A Cause Of Wars?,
http://www.pugwash.org/reports/pac/pac256/WG4draft1.htm)
Thus, these armed conflicts can hardly be said to be caused by poverty as a principal factor when the greed and envy of
leaders and their hegemonic ambitions provide sufficient cause. The poor would appear to be more the victims than the
perpetrators of armed conflict. It might be alleged that some dramatic event or rapid sequence of those types of events
that lead to the exacerbation of poverty might be the catalyst for a violent reaction on the part of the people or on the
part of the political leadership who might be tempted to seek a diversion by finding/fabricating an enemy and going to
war. According to a study undertaken by Minxin Pei and Ariel Adesnik of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, there would not appear to be any merit in this hypothesis. After studying 93 episodes of
economic crisis in 22 countries in Latin America and Asia in the years since World War II they concluded
that Much of the conventional wisdom about the political impact of economic crises may be wrong... The
severity of economic crisis---as measured in terms of inflation and negative growth---bore no relationship to
the collapse of regimes. A more direct role was played by political variables such as ideological polarization, labor
radicalism, guerilla insurgencies and an anti-Communist military... (In democratic states) such changes
seldom lead to an outbreak of violence (while) in the cases of dictatorships and semi-democracies, the ruling
elites responded to crises by increasing repression (thereby using one form of violence to abort another.
Econ collapse saps resources from military aggression
Bennett 2k – PolSci Prof, Penn State (Scott and Timothy Nordstrom, Foreign Policy Substitutability and Internal Economic Problems in
Enduring Rivalries, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Ebsco)
Conflict settlement is also a distinct route to dealing with internal problems that leaders in rivalries may pursue when
faced with internal problems. Military competition between states requires large amounts of resources, and rivals
require even more attention. Leaders may choose to negotiate a settlement that ends a rivalry to free up
important resources that may be reallocated to the domestic economy. In a “guns versus butter” world of
economic trade-offs, when a state can no longer afford to pay the expenses associated with competition in a rivalry, it is
quite rational for leaders to reduce costs by ending a rivalry. This gain (a peace dividend) could be achieved at any time
by ending a rivalry. However, such a gain is likely to be most important and attractive to leaders when internal
conditions are bad and the leader is seeking ways to alleviate active problems. Support for policy change away
from continued rivalry is more likely to develop when the economic situation sours and elites and
masses are looking for ways to improve a worsening situation. It is at these times that the pressure to
cut military investment will be greatest and that state leaders will be forced to recognize the difficulty of
continuing to pay for a rivalry. Among other things, this argument also encompasses the view that the cold war
ended because the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics could no longer compete economically with the
United States.
Their authors lie about the data
Blattman 11 (Chris, Assistant Professor of Political Science & Economics at Yale.
http://chrisblattman.com/2011/11/28/the-publication-bias-problem-and-the-redemption-of-blattman/)
At long last, regressions were run and… no result. No relationship between price shocks and
conflict, even in the most generous scenarios. I shrugged and thought, “Well, so much for that.” My
committee said, “Huh, what about that child soldiering project we told you not to do?” And off I went on my career as
micro-conflict man. In the meantime, lots of papers that did see an impact of economic shocks on
conflict or instability did get published. The conventional wisdom grew: Rising incomes made the
state more attractive to rebels as a prize, and falling incomes made it easier to recruit rebels. No
matter that these two ideas ran in apparently opposite directions. Meanwhile, I met other academics
that had run the same regression as me. Famous ones you have probably heard of. Their reaction was the same
as mine: “Oh, I found that result,” several said, “but I’m worried there’s nothing there because my data
have problems, and the specification wasn’t quite right. So I left it out of the paper. I’ve been meaning to
get back to that.” Let’s follow a simple decision rule: run your regressions with inevitably imperfect data and models.
If you get the theoretically predicted result (any of them), publish. If not, wait and look into your
data and empirical strategy more. The result? As in the natural sciences, most published research
findings are probably false.
Econ decline makes leaders cautious not aggressive
Boehmer 2007 – political science professor at the University of Texas (Charles, Politics & Policy, 35:4, “The
Effects of Economic Crisis, Domestic Discord, and State Efficacy on the Decision to Initiate Interstate Conflict”,
WEA)
The theory presented earlier predicts that lower rates of growth suppress participation in foreign conflicts, particularly
concerning conflict initiation and escalation to combat. To sustain combat, states need to be militarily prepared and not
open up a second frosnt when they are already fighting, or may fear, domestic opposition. A good example would be
when the various Afghani resistance fighters expelled the Soviet Union from their territory, but the Taliban crumbled
when it had to face the combined forces of the United States and Northern Alliance insurrection. Yet the coefficient
for GDP growth and MID initiations was negative but insignificant. However, considering that there are
many reasons why states fight, the logic presented earlier should hold especially in regard to the risk of participating in
more severe conflicts. Threats to use military force may be safe to make and may be made with both external and
internal actors in mind, but in the end may remain mere cheap talk that does not risk escalation if there is a chance to
back down. Chiozza and Goemans (2004b) found that secure leaders were more likely to become involved
in war than insecure leaders, supporting the theory and evidence presented here. We should find that
leaders who face domestic opposition and a poorly performing economy shy away from situations
that could escalate to combat if doing so would compromise their ability to retain power.
Trade does not solve war—there’s no correlation between trade and peace
MARTIN et al ‘8 (Phillipe, University of Paris 1 Pantheon—Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics, and Centre
for Economic Policy Research; Thierry MAYER, University of Paris 1 Pantheon—Sorbonne, Paris School of
Economics, CEPII, and Centre for Economic Policy Research, Mathias THOENIG, University of Geneva and Paris
School of Economics, The Review of Economic Studies 75)
Does globalization pacify international relations? The “liberal” view in political science argues that
increasing trade flows and the spread of free markets and democracy should limit the incentive to use military force in
interstate relations. This vision, which can partly be traced back to Kant’s Essay on Perpetual Peace (1795), has been
very influential: The main objective of the European trade integration process was to prevent the killing and destruction
of the two World Wars from ever happening again.1 Figure 1 suggests2 however, that during the 1870–2001
period, the correlation between trade openness and military conflicts is not a clear cut one. The first
era of globalization, at the end of the 19th century, was a period of rising trade openness and multiple
military conflicts, culminating with World War I. Then, the interwar period was characterized by a
simultaneous collapse of world trade and conflicts. After World War II, world trade increased
rapidly, while the number of conflicts decreased (although the risk of a global conflict was obviously
high). There is no clear evidence that the 1990s, during which trade flows increased dramatically,
was a period of lower prevalence of military conflicts, even taking into account the increase in the number of
sovereign states.
Trade conflicts won’t escalate
NYE ‘96 (Joseph, Dean of the Kennedy School of Government – Harvard University, Washington Quarterly,
Winter)
The low likelihood of direct great power clashes does not mean that there will be no tensions between
them. Disagreements are likely to continue over regional conflicts, like those that have arisen over how to deal with the
conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Efforts to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction and means of their delivery
are another source of friction, as is the case over Russian and Chinese nuclear cooperation with Iran, which the United
States steadfastly opposes. The sharing of burdens and responsibilities for maintaining international security and
protecting the natural environment are a further subject of debate among the great powers. Furthermore, in contrast to
the views of classical Liberals, increased trade and economic interdependence can increase as well as
decrease conflict and competition among trading partners. The main point, however, is that such
disagreements are very unlikely to escalate to military conflicts.
Historical evidence proves you wrong.
Mearsheimer 2k (John J., poli sci Professor at the U of Chicago, co-director of the Program on International
Security Policy, The Future Of The American Military Presence In Europe, edited by Lloyd Matthews,
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/2000/milpres/milpres.pdf)
Implicit in your question and in Professor Kaysen’s answer is the belief that increasing economic
interdependence promotes peace. In other words, as states get richer and become more interconnected, there is a
substantial decrease in the likelihood of war between them. There is a large international relations literature on
this subject and it finds little support for that claim. Before World War I, for example, there was a
significant amount of economic interdependence and prosperity in Europe, but war still happened. More
recently, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990 in good part because Kuwait was overproducing its OPEC oil quotas and driving down world oil prices, thus harming the Iraqi economy,
which was already in serious trouble from its war against Iran between 1980 and 1988. In short, because of the
interdependency of Iraq and Kuwait through their membership in OPEC, Iraq chose to attack its
neighbor. Thus, we should at least have reservations about the claim that economic interdependence
produces peace.
And, they’re confusing causality – free trade doesn’t cause peace, peace allows free trade
Layne, ‘98
[Christopher, Visiting Associate Professor at Naval Postgraduate School, Summer, World Policy Journal, p. 8-28.]
These arguments notwithstanding, international economic interdependence does not cause peace. In fact,
it has very serious adverse security consequences that its proponents either do not understand or will not acknowledge.
Economic relations (whether domestic or international) never take place in a vacuum; on the contrary, they
occur within a politically defined framework. International economic interdependence requires certain
conditions in order to flourish, including a maximum degree of political order and stability. Just as
the market cannot function within a state unless the state creates a stable "security" environment in which economic
exchange can occur (by protecting property rights and enforcing contracts), the same is true in international relations.
Because there is no world government, it falls to the dominant state to create the conditions under which economic
interdependence can take hold (by providing security, rules of the game, and a reserve currency, and by acting as the
global economy's banker and lender of last resort). Without a dominant power to perform these tasks,
economic interdependence does not happen. Indeed, free trade and interdependence have occurred in the
modern international system only during the hegemonies of Victorian Britain and postwar America. International
economic interdependence generally occurs when states feel secure, when they do not have to worry that others will
transform their economic gains from trade into military advantages. Conversely, when states are concerned about their
security, they are less likely to engage in free trade. When security is at issue, states are always measuring themselves
in comparison with their actual, or potential, rivals. When states feel secure, they focus on the overall gains to global
wealth that flow from trade. Under peaceful international conditions, the distribution of this increased wealth is not a
matter of high politics: so long as all states are getting wealthier, trade is looked upon as a good thing. When security is
an issue, however, states become intensely concerned about how the gains from trade are being distributed. When
security concerns are paramount, the key question no longer is whether everyone is gaining something but rather who is
gaining the most. Because economic power is the cornerstone of military strength, when security is an issue states want
their economies to be more vigorous and to grow faster than those of their rivals. Also, when war is regarded as a real
possibility, states deliberately attempt to reduce their dependence on imported products and raw materials in order to
minimize their vulnerability to economic coercion by others. This also impairs economic interdependence. The bottom
line here is this: When security in the international system is plentiful, trade flourishes and, so long as they are getting
richer themselves, states are untroubled by the fact that others also are getting wealthier. When security in the
international system is scarce, however, trade diminishes; states seek to maximize their power (economic and military)
over their rivals, and hence attempt to ensure they become richer than their rivals.
1NC – China ADV.
The TPP will cause allow for corporations to subvert
regulations accelerating environmental collapse – the AsianPacific region is key
Nash-hoff 13 -Michele Nash-Hoff, Founder and President at ElectroFab Sales (“The Trans-Pacific
Partnership Trade Agreement Would Harm Our Environment”, 7/10/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-nashhoff/the-transpacific-partners_1_b_3568136.html)//sawyer
Proponents say that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement would be a platform for economic
integration and government deregulation for nations surrounding the Pacific Rim and facilitate free trade to
counter China's financial influence in Asia and the Pacific. The negotiating parties include Australia, Brunei,
Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States. Japan also
announced its intention to join the agreement last spring. Because the TPP is intended as a "docking
agreement," other Pacific Rim countries could join over time, and the Philippines, Thailand, Colombia, and
others are already expressing interest. The TPP is poised to become the largest Free Trade Agreement in the
world. According toCitizensTrade.org, "The ongoing, multi-year negotiations over the TPP are supposed to
conclude this year, so the window of opportunity for preventing this free trade agreement is rapidly closing."
Among other reasons about which I have written previously, opponents of the TPP say it would harm our
planet's environment, subverting climate change measures and regulation of mining, land use,
and biotechnology. The Pacific Rim is an area of great significance from an environmental perspective. It
includes Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef system, home to more than 11,000
species. It includes Peru and its Amazon Rainforest --
one of the most biologically diverse
areas on Earth . In May 2007, citizen-led advocacy groups including the Sierra Club forged a
bipartisan consensus that set the minimum standards for environment, labor and other provisions to be
included in future trade agreements. According to sections of the
TPP that have been leaked, it
appears that these minimum standards are being ignored. It is essential that the
environment chapter of the TPP build on the environmental protection progress that has been made: "At the
minimum, the chapter should be binding and subject to the same dispute settlement provisions as
commercial chapters; ensure that countries uphold and strengthen their domestic environmental laws and
policies and their obligations under agreed multilateral environmental agreements; and include biding
provisions to address the core environment and conservation challenges of the Pacific Rim region, such as
efforts to combat illegal trade in wood, wood products, and wildlife and to strengthen
fisheries management." If you "Google" TPP and the environment, you come up with more than 20 pages
of articles by one organization after another and one author after another expressing reasons why the TPP
would harm the environment. The opposition to the TPP began as early as 2011 when the first drafts
were leaked and intensified in 2012. These organizations include the Sierra Club, Public Citizen group
(founded by Ralph Nader), the Citizens Trade Campaign, and Economy in Crisis, among many others. A
common thread of the articles is either a subtle or overt accusation that President Obama has "sold out" to
Wall Street/big banks and multinational/transnational corporations. On their website, Union-backed We
Party Patriots states, "...the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is being put together in extreme secrecy. This
secrecy comes complete with a total lack of mainstream media coverage despite serious potential long-term
effects. Leaked documents show that the TPP will have a chilling effect on the ability of the United
States government to take legal action against multi-national corporations for their abuses of
environmental, agricultural, and labor laws." The Fair World Project's website states that in late 2012, "a
group of labor leaders, trade justice advocates, family farmers, environmentalists, food sovereignty groups
and others from the U.S., Canada and Mexico created a 'North American Unity Statement Opposing NAFTA
Expansion through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP),' with the goal of uniting 1,000 organizations in
opposition to the TPP." On March 7, 2013, Friends of the Earth announced that it had released a new video,
"Peril in the Pacific: Trans Pacific trade agreement threatens people and the planet." The video illustrates
these threats by telling the story of "Chevron v. Ecuador" international investment suit brought under an
existing U.S. treaty. The video raises questions like: "Who should pay to clean up what has been called the
"Rainforest Chernobyl" in the Ecuadorian Amazon? Why are the people of the rainforest who suffered the
most not represented at the international tribunal hearing the case? Is it U.S. policy to favor the
financial interests of multi-national corporations over people and the environment in such
disputes?" The video also asks why the negotiating framework for the TPP favors Wall Street and
multinational corporations at the expense of current U. S. environmental and climate policy and why does it
allow multinational corporations to challenge laws that protect our air, land and water. Because the AsiaPacific region accounts for about one third of all the threatened species in the world, Friends of
the Earth is concerned that the TPP trade agreement potentially checkmates many of our
country's past environmental victories and would block new initiatives.
The natural
environment and rich biodiversity of the Pacific Rim are threatened by
illegal and/or unsustainable commercial exploitation of the ocean, natural
resources, and forests. Friends of the Earth recommends that the TPP negotiators must address
the following issues to avoid the most serious environmental harms by: Including an environment chapter
that would obligate countries to enforce domestic environmental protections and abide by global
environmental agreements that are enforceable through international lawsuits. Rejecting the proposed
TPP investment chapter that would authorize foreign investors to bypass domestic courts and bring suit
before special international tribunals biased in favor of multinationals to seek awards of
unlimited monetary damages in compensation for the cost of complying with environmental
and other public interest regulations. Rejecting "provisions of the TPP intellectual property chapter
that would provide international legal protections for corporate patents on plant and animal life,
granting companies ownership and sole access to these building blocks of
life." Rejecting the regulatory coherence chapter that could hamstring environmental regulation and
"encourage cost-benefit analysis that exaggerates financial costs and minimizes the intrinsic value of
protecting living things, wild places, and the stability of the ecosystem." Friends of the Earth urges that the
TPP "must serve to strengthen environmental protection and support the biodiversity in the
Pacific Rim and not facilitate a race to the bottom in environmental deregulation." What
surprises me is that all of the above organizations supported President Obama in his bid for reelection last
year despite the fact that he had gone back on his pledge "to oppose Bush-style free trade agreements that
lead to thousands of lost American jobs" and his word to "not support NAFTA-type trade agreements" in his
2008 campaign. Now that he is elected for his second and last term, what incentive does he have to
listen to the opinions of these organizations that oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership
agreement? None! A few conservative news outlets such as WorldNet Daily began to recognize the
dangers of the TPP early this year, beginning with the article, "Obama skirting Congress in globalist plan?" in
which Jerome Corsi warn that "the administration apparently plans to restrict congressional prerogatives to
an up-or-down vote" utilizing the "fast-track authority," a provision under the Trade Promotion Authority
that requires Congress to review a FTA under limited debate, in an accelerated time frame subject to a yesor-no vote. Under fast-track authority, there is no provision for Congress to modify the agreement by
submitting amendments to ensure foreign partners that the FTA, once signed, will not be changed during the
legislative process. In a more recent article, "Obama's 2-ocean globalist plan," Jerome Corsi writes, "Quietly,
the Obama administration is systematically putting into place a two-ocean globalist plan that will dwarf all
prior trade agreements, including NAFTA, with the goal of establishing the global sovereignty envisioned by
New World Order enthusiasts. The two agreements are the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, and the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TIPP. WND has learned the Obama
administration plans to jam the TPP through Congress no later than Dec. 31." We certainly cannot
expect to influence the President to oppose the TPP near the end of three-years of negotiations that took
place under his direction. With the virtual black out of coverage about the TPP in the mainstream media, the
best we can do is make our opinions heard loud and clear to our Senators and Congressional representatives
and urge our family, friends, and members of our personal and business network to do the same. We must
urge our elected representatives to vote against granting President Obama "fast track authority" under the
Trade Promotion Authority. There is no time to waste. Contact your congressional representative and tell
them we cannot afford another damaging "free trade" agreement that would destroy our national
sovereignty, hurt American manufacturers, and harm our environment. Tell them to vote "no" to granting
the President "fast track authority."
Biodiversity collapse will lead to an invisible threshold of
destruction
Diner, 94 [David, Ph.D., Planetary Science and Geology, "The Army and the Endangered Species Act:
Who's Endangering Whom?," Military Law Review, 143 Mil. L. Rev. 161]
To accept that the snail darter, harelip sucker, or Dismal Swamp southeastern shrew 74 could save
[hu]mankind may be difficult for some. Many, if not most, species are useless to[hu]man[s] in a direct
utilitarian sense. Nonetheless, they may be critical in an indirect role, because their extirpations
could affect a directly useful species negatively. In a closely interconnected ecosystem, the loss of a
species affects other species dependent on it. 75 Moreover, as the number of species decline, the effect
of each new extinction on the remaining species increases dramatically. 4. Biological Diversity. -- The main
premise of species preservation is that diversity is better than simplicity. 77 As the current mass extinction
has progressed, the world's biological diversity generally has decreased. This trend occurs within ecosystems
by reducing the number of species, and within species by reducing the number of individuals. Both trends
carry serious future implications. 78 [*173] Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large
number of specialist species, filling narrow ecological niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable
than less diverse systems. "The more complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it can resist a stress. . . .
[l]ike a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several strands, such a fabric can resist collapse
better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads -- which if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole." 79 By
causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity
increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl
conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this
trend continues.
Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its
dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem
collapse and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster.
Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, 80 [hu]mankind may be
edging closer to the abyss.
Broader strategic cooperation outweighs
Jeffrey A. Bader 11, visiting scholar at the China Center at Brookings, “U.S.-China Senior Dialogue: Maintaining the Balance”,
May 6, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0506_strategic_economic_dialogue_bader.aspx
The S&ED comes at a time when U.S.-China
relations are in fundamentally sound condition. President Hu
Jintao’s visit to the United States was generally assessed as setting a realistic tone and achieving successes
in a relationship that will always be marked by frictions. President Obama, who will be involved in the S&ED,
has put a high priority on U.S.-China relations, and the two sides have cooperated, within limits, on major security
issues, including Iran, Korea, Sudan, Libya, and nuclear security. From the U.S. perspective, it will certainly not hurt that the
meeting comes only a week after the successful raid that eliminated Osama bin Laden, which sends a message of U.S. strength and
credibility in a relationship where those qualities are always the subject of Chinese scrutiny. The United States and China
have developed reasonable expectations about both the possibilities and limits of cooperation,
which will reduce the chances of future miscalculation. All of these subjects, plus broader developments in the
Middle East, will be on the agenda of the S&ED.
Relations are resilient, but the cooperation that their impacts
assume is impossible
Harry Harding 11, founding dean of the School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia,
“Are China and the U.S. on a collision course?”, June 14, http://thinkingaboutasia.blogspot.com/2011/06/are-chinaand-us-on-collision-course.html
In my judgment, it
is highly unlikely for the relationship between the US and China to be primarily
cooperative, at least in the short to medium term. The differences in values, political systems, interests,
levels of development, and perceptions of the existing international order are simply too great for
the two countries to find common ground on all issues, or even to find a mutually agreeable
allocation of costs and benefits when they try to pursue common interests. Only a common interest that
was massively compelling – say a widespread pandemic, another financial crisis, a global outbreak of terrorist activity targeted at both
countries, or increasingly severe consequences of climate change – might produce a predominantly cooperative relationship.
Fortunately, an essentially confrontational relationship is also unlikely, especially if one is primarily
concerned with the risks of military conflict. The high degree of economic interdependence between
the two countries has already created a relatively resilient relationship. The cost of military
conflict, especially given the fact that both China and the US are nuclear powers, will be a significant deterrent against
military conflict. Equally important, the probability of the most worrying of the trigger events identified above– a
unilateral declaration of independence by Taiwan – is presently quite low, as is the risk that China would try to compel
unification through the use of force.
No impact to relations – its leverage is limited, multilat solves,
and their impact isn’t reverse causal—and relations resilient
Economy 11 – C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations
(Elizabeth C., 01/14, “Reality in U.S.-China Relations,” http://www.cfr.org/china/reality-us-china-relations/p23803)
Second, Washington
needs to remember that its bilateral leverage is--and always has been--limited. The
United States' greatest leverage arises from working with its allies to engage (and sometimes pressure)
China. Success, whether on advancing climate change or rolling back unfair Chinese trade and investment policies,
has come when the United States finds common cause with others. Finally, progress in the U.S.-China
relationship ultimately depends on China as well. Chinese foreign policy elite debate all matter of policy. Already in private
conversations, Chinese analysts are suggesting that in the wake of China's 2010 policy travails, they are more interested in seeking
common ground with the United States. On the sensitive issue of how to handle North Korea, important voices such as Fudan
professor Shen Dingli and Beida professor Zhu Feng are proposing a rethink of China's policy. These domestic voices are the real key
to future effective U.S.-China cooperation. The dream of a robust U.S.-China partnership to lead the world
through the thicket of ever-proliferating global challenges remains. But for now, dreaming is no
substitute for the hard work of negotiating reality.
No war over Taiwan – relations stabilizing
Bush, 10 [Richard C Bush III, Director, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution,
“China-Taiwan: Recent Economic, Political, and Military Developments Across the Strait, and Implications for the
United States,” 3/18/10, Brookings, http://www.brookings.edu/testimony/2010/0318_china_economy_bush.aspx]
What is the trajectory of the current process? Conceptually, there are at least two possibilities. On
the one hand, and more
consequential, what we are watching might reflect movement toward the resolution of the
fundamental dispute between the two sides. One type of resolution would be unification according to the PRC’s onecounty, two-systems formula, but there are others. On the other hand, what we are seeing could be the
stabilization of cross-Strait relations. That term implies several things: increasing two-way contact,
reducing mutual fear, increasing mutual trust and predictability, expanding areas of cooperation,
institutionalizing interaction, and so on. It constitutes a shift from the conflicted coexistence of
the 1995-2008 period to a more relaxed coexistence. Examples of this process at work are the array
of economic agreements that the two sides have concluded, removing obstacles to closer
interchange; China’s approval for Taiwan to attend the 2009 meeting of the World Health
Assembly; and the two sides’ tacit agreement that neither will steal the other’s diplomatic
partners. In and of itself, stabilization does not lead ineluctably to a resolution of the China-Taiwan dispute—however much
Beijing prefers inevitability and however much some in Taiwan fear it. President Ma has been quite explicit that unification will not
be discussed during his term of office, whether that is four or eight years. The Chinese leadership at least realizes that the current
situation is better than the previous one and understands that resolution will be a long-term process. Certainly, however,
stabilization can create a better climate for resolution. It’s easier to address the tough conceptual
issues that are at the heart of this dispute in an environment of greater mutual trust. But I don’t see that
happening anytime soon. Stabilization can also evolve very incrementally toward resolution, either
through better mutual understanding or because one side, knowingly or unknowingly, makes
concessions to the other. How stabilization might migrate to resolution brings me to the Commission’s questions. China’s
Initiatives Since 2005, and in contrast to past periods, China’s approach to Taiwan has been rather skillful. President Hu Jintao shifted
the priority from achieving unification in the near or medium term to opposing Taiwan independence (unification remains the longterm goal). Although he speaks about the need for the two sides to “scrupulously abide by the one-China principle,” he has been
prepared, for the sake of achieving substantive progress, to tolerate so far the Ma administration’s quite ambiguous approach to that
issue. The Beijing leadership recognizes the importance of building mutual trust through dialogue and exchanges after a decade-plus
of mutual fear. It is emphasizing what the two sides have in common—economic cooperation and Chinese culture—and agreed to
reduce somewhat the zero-sum competition in the international arena. Through its policies and interactions, it is trying to build up
support for a PRC-friendly public on Taiwan. It sees the value of institutionalizing a more stable cross-Strait relationship. The
exception to this trend is the continuation of the People’s Liberation Army’s acquisition of capabilities that are relevant to a Taiwan
contingency. Why this build-up continues, in spite of the decline in tensions since President Ma took office, is puzzling. After all,
Ma’s policies reduce significantly what Beijing regarded as a serious national security problem. China is more secure today than two
years ago, yet it continues to make Taiwan more vulnerable. Possible explanations are rigid procurement schedules; the inability of
civilian leaders to impose a change even when it makes policy sense; and a decision to fill out its capacity to coerce and intimidate
Taiwan, in case a future Taiwan government challenges China’s fundamental interests. The answer is not clear. I am inclined to
believe that it is a combination of the second and third reasons. What is clear is that this trend is in no one's interests – Taiwan's,
China's or the United States'. Taiwan's leaders are unlikely to negotiate seriously on the issues on Beijing's agenda under a darkening
cloud of possible coercion and intimidation. The Taiwanese people will not continue to support pro-engagement leaders if they
conclude that this policy has made Taiwan less secure. The U.S. will not benefit if mutual fear again pervades the Taiwan Strait.
Where do Current Trends Lead? To be honest, I do not know. I cannot rule out the possibility that gradually and over time the Taiwan
public and political leaders will abandon decades of opposition to one-country, two systems and choose to let Taiwan become a
special administrative region of the PRC. But I doubt it. Despite the consciousness on the island of China’s growing power and
leverage, there is still a broad consensus that the Republic of China (or Taiwan) is a sovereign state, a position that is inconsistent with
China’s formula. Moreover, because of the provisions of the ROC constitution, fundamental change of the sort that Beijing wants
would require constitutional amendments and therefore a broad and strong political consensus, which does not exist at this time. So if
political integration is to occur in the next couple of decades, it will occur not because of the cumulative impact of economic
integration but because Beijing has decided to make Taiwan an offer that is better than one-country, two systems. So far, I see no sign
it will do so. The more likely future is the continued creation and consolidation of a stabilized order, one
in which economic interdependence deepens, social and cultural interaction grows, competition in
the international community is muted, and all these arrangements will be institutionalized to one
degree or another. But none of this will be automatic. Issues relevant to the resolution of the dispute (e.g. whether Taiwan is a
sovereign entity) may come up in the process of stabilization and dealt with in ways that do not hurt either side’s interests And the
issue of China’s growing military power—and what it reflects about PLA intentions—remains.
No war – even if crises occur, deterrence prevents them from
escalating
Ganguly, 8 [Sumit Ganguly is a professor of political science and holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair at Indiana
University, Bloomington. “Nuclear Stability in South Asia,” International Security, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Fall 2008), pp. 45–
70]
As the outcomes of the 1999 and 2001–02 crises show, nuclear deterrence is robust in South Asia.
Both crises were contained at levels considerably short of full-scale war. That said, as Paul Kapur has
argued, Pakistan’s acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability may well have emboldened its leadership, secure in the belief that India
had no good options to respond. India, in turn, has been grappling with an effort to forge a new military doctrine and strategy to enable
it to respond to Pakistani needling while containing the possibilities of conflict escalation, especially to the nuclear level.78 Whether
Indian military planners can fashion such a calibrated strategy to cope with Pakistani probes remains an open question. This article’s
analysis of the 1999 and 2001–02 crises does suggest, however, that nuclear deterrence in South Asia is far from
parlous, contrary to what the critics have suggested. Three specific forms of evidence can be adduced to argue the
case for the strength of nuclear deterrence. First, there is a serious problem of conflation in the arguments of
both Hoyt and Kapur. Undeniably, Pakistan’s willingness to provoke India has increased
commensurate with its steady acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. This period from the late 1980s to the late
1990s, however, also coincided with two parallel developments that equipped Pakistan with the
motives, opportunities, and means to meddle in India’s internal affairs—particularly in Jammu and
Kashmir. The most important change that occurred was the end of the conflict with the Soviet Union, which
freed up military resources for use in a new jihad in Kashmir. This jihad, in turn, was made possible by the
emergence of an indigenous uprising within the state as a result of Indian political malfeasance.79 Once the jihadis were organized,
trained, armed, and unleashed, it is far from clear whether Pakistan could control the behavior and actions of every resulting jihadist
organization.80 Consequently, although the number of attacks on India did multiply during the 1990s, it is
difficult to establish a firm causal connection between the growth of Pakistani boldness and its
gradual acquisition of a full-fledged nuclear weapons capability. Second, India did respond with
considerable force once its military planners realized the full scope and extent of the intrusions
across the Line of Control. Despite the vigor of this response, India did exhibit restraint. For example,
Indian pilots were under strict instructions not to cross the Line of Control in pursuit of their bombing objectives.81 They
adhered to these guidelines even though they left them more vulnerable to Pakistani ground ªre.82
The Indian military exercised such restraint to avoid provoking Pakistani fears of a wider attack
into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and then into Pakistan itself. Indian restraint was also evident at another
level. During the last war in Kashmir in 1965, within a week of its onset, the Indian Army horizontally escalated with an attack into
Pakistani Punjab. In fact, in the Punjab, Indian forces successfully breached the international border and reached the outskirts of the
regional capital, Lahore. The Indian military resorted to this strategy under conditions that were not especially propitious for the
country. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, had died in late 1964. His successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri, was
a relatively unknown politician of uncertain stature and standing, and the Indian military was still recovering from the trauma of the
1962 border war with the People’s Republic of China.83 Finally, because of its role in the Cold War, the Pakistani military was armed
with more sophisticated, U.S.-supplied weaponry, including the F-86 Sabre and the F-104 Starfighter aircraft. India, on the other hand,
had few supersonic aircraft in its inventory, barring a small number of Soviet-supplied MiG-21s and the indigenously built HF-24.84
Furthermore, the Indian military remained concerned that China might open a second front along the Himalayan border. Such
concerns were not entirely chimerical, because a Sino-Pakistani entente was under way. Despite these limitations, the Indian political
leadership responded to Pakistani aggression with vigor and granted the Indian military the necessary authority to expand the scope of
the war. In marked contrast to the politico-military context of 1965, in 1999 India had a self-confident (if belligerent) political
leadership and a substantially more powerful military apparatus. Moreover, the country had overcome most of its Nehruvian
inhibitions about the use of force to resolve disputes.85 Furthermore, unlike in 1965, India had at least two reserve strike corps in the
Punjab in a state of military readiness and poised to attack across the border if given the political nod.86 Despite these significant
differences and advantages, the Indian political leadership chose to scrupulously limit the scope of the conflict to the Kargil region. As
K. Subrahmanyam, a prominent Indian defense analyst and political commentator, wrote in 1993:. The awareness on both
sides of a nuclear capability that can enable either country to assemble nuclear weapons at short
notice induces mutual caution. This caution is already evident on the part of India. In 1965, when
Pakistan carried out its “Operation Gibraltar” and sent in infiltrators, India sent its army across
the cease-fire line to destroy the assembly points of the infiltrators. That escalated into a full-scale war. In 1990,
when Pakistan once again carried out a massive infiltration of terrorists trained in Pakistan, India tried to
deal with the problem on Indian territory and did not send its army into Pakistan-occupied
Kashmir.87
No risk of China War – mutual cooperation
Friedberg 2005, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, Deputy Assistant for
National Security Affairs and Director of Policy Planning in the Office of the Vice President, International Security,
Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall 2005), pp. 7–45
, a number of the factors to which the optimists point seem likely to continue to act as a
brake on what might otherwise be an unchecked slide toward mounting competition and
increasingly open confrontation. Assuming that they persist and grow, the mutual gains from an expanding
economic relationship will remain the single most important peace-inducing force at work in
U.S.-China relations. The potential costs of a conflict between the two powers, especially given that both possess
nuclear weapons, should also help to keep competitive impulses within bounds and to make both sides
very wary of embarking on any course that could risk direct conflict. The emergence of a group
of Chinese “new thinkers” could also contribute to a less zero-sum, hard realpolitik approach to
relations with the United States. As with the Soviet Union during the era of perestroika, so also in this case changes in high-level
thinking could have a calming effect on bilateral relations, even if they were not accompanied immediately by more profound and
Fortunately
far-reaching domestic political reforms.
The TPP will crush India’s and Pakistan’s textile industries
PTJ 13 – Pakistan textile Journal, (“Trans Pacific Partnership, a valid threat for Pakistan’s textile sector”,
06, 2013, http://www.ptj.com.pk/Web-2013/06-2013/PDF-June-2013/Editorial.pdf)//sawyer
While the motivation for this agreement may be China, it is countries such as Pakistan and India which will
be badly affected when this agreement takes place in the near future. The US accounts for 30% of total
apparel and textile exports of India. While Pakistan is hoping for GSP plus status in 2014 from the European
Union, India is on the verge of signing a free trade agreement with the EU.
The high duties as
compared with the TPP member countries will render textile and garment
exports uncompetitive . The most disturbing aspect of this agreement is the ‘yarn forward rule’
that makes it obligatory to procure all the components of any manufactured products from other TPP
member countries to avail the benefits of duty waiver. If any component is found to be of origin outside of
the member countries, full duties on apparel and textiles would be applicable.
This will negatively
effect and disturb the global supply chain in textile and apparel. While aimed
mainly at China, Pakistan and other countries who are manufactures of raw material for
apparel and textiles will surely suffer from ‘collateral damage’ as a result of TPP. The large
retailers and textile buyers such as JC Penny and Levis from the US are not in the favour of any provisions
that would exclude traditional suppliers of yarn and fabrics like Pakistan and India to TPP member countries
including the US. The government and the industry need to pay heed and lobby for flexibilities in the “yarn
forward rule”before it is too late. We may gain GSP Plus to the European Union but risk losing a big market
share of the US and other member countries of Trans Pacific Parnership Agreement
Those are key to India Pakistan relations and trade
PTJ 12 – Pakistan textile Journal, (‘Textile industry to benefit from open trade between India and
Pakistan”, 04-2012, http://www.ptj.com.pk/Web-2012/04-2012/Editorial.htm)//sawyer
Names such as Lakshmi for the spinning industry, Kuster Calico for the finishing industry and Bajaj for the
ginning industry can offer to Pakistan’s textile industry the highest technology at reasonable price and short
delivery times. Pakistan due to its extremely restrictive trade with India could not benefit from Indian
machines until two years ago when a large part of spinning machines were officially allowed except the ring
frames. Now complete range of textile machines can be imported except for a few parts and accessories
which are being made in Pakistan and therefore are given protection. Mr. G.T. Dembla, ex Chairman of
Textile Machinery Manufacturers Association of India, who has visited Pakistan several times spoke to the
editor PTJ and
said that this liberalization of trade will go a long way in
improving the relations between two neighbors India and Pakistan . He said
over the years his various meetings with the government functionaries including ex Prime Minister Shaukat
Aziz, he always stressed the importance of trade between India and Pakistan .
He is an active member of ITME India Society the organizers of the textile machinery exhibition ITME held
every four years. He believes that this year in December, many visitors from Pakistan who visit ITME India
2012 will be able to witness first hand the level of high technology for the textile industry India. Mr. Venkat
Reddy, Managing Director of Kuster Calico, was part of a delegation to Pakistan in 2001, fondly remembered
his last visit and said that it is an important moment in history which will bode well for good relations
between India and Pakistan. Pakistan also has a lot to offer to India and together they can be a formidable
force. Mr. Amir Madhani whose company, Madhani Associates has been representing Lakshmi Group since
2010, is delighted with the new developments. According to him finally a complete range of state of
the art spinning machines including ring frames will be available for Pakistan’s textile
industry. Furthermore it will generate a healthy competitive environment which will benefit the industry by
and large. Mr. Amjad Taj Khan, who represents Bajaj, Lakshmi Card Clothing and a number of other Indian
textile machinery brands says that it is a very positive development. Pakistan can now benefit from the R & D
of companies, like Bajaj who have developed double roller ginning machines most suitable for the
subcontinental cotton. This technology which has replaced obsolete saw gin technology is already proving its
worth and India is striding ahead in clean and high quality cotton production needed for high value added
textiles.
Relations and trade are key to prevent IndoPak war—
extinction
CSIS 12 – Center for Strategic International Studies, (“Thaw in South Asia: Can Free Trade Prevent War?”,
September 26, 2012, http://cogitasia.com/thaw-in-south-asia-can-free-trade-prevent-war/)//sawyer
A cursory Google search using keywords “free trade,” “prevent,” and “war,” reveals a body of literature rich
on academic studies and scholars attempting to understand the relationship between the level of economic
integration between two countries and the likelihood that said countries will engage in armed conflict.
Robert Cobden, a 19th century British liberal thinker, postulated that the “gains from trade” combined with
the uncertainty involved with the costs of armed conflict incentivizes nations to uphold the peace. Simply
put: trade pays more than war. While the jury is still out on the merits of this argument, those who follow
India-Pakistan relations have reason to root for Mr. Cobden. A recent spate of high-level meetings
between Pakistan and India has produced an impressive array of progress on the economic front, signaling a
step forward in economic interaction between the South Asian neighbors. On September 7, India’s Foreign
Minister S.M. Krishna met with his Pakistani counterpart, Hina Rabbani Khar. While security, terrorism,
and border disputes were discussed, the real chatter revolved around a landmark visa agreement signed by
both countries making it easier for businesspeople as well as those with relatives across the border to travel
freely. Adding to this, the Indian and Pakistani Commerce Secretaries met September 20-21 and upstaged
their foreign ministry counterparts. Commerce Secretary S.R Rao and Munir Qureshi signed three
agreements: a trade grievances agreement, a mutual recognition agreement and a customs cooperation
agreement. They also attended an inauguration of an Integrated Check Post at Attari and discussed
promoting trade through increased high-capacity railway traffic, opening additional land routes across the
border (between Munabhao and Khokhrapar) and ways to encourage two-way investment. The Pakistani
side reiterated its goal to grant MFN status to India by the end of 2012 and both nations vowed to further
reduce the number of goods protected under the SAFTA sensitive list, scale down tariffs to maximum of 5%,
and remove all non-tariff barriers by 2020. Some analysts indicate that these recently-announced
achievements and stated future goals—if pursued to completion—could boost bilateral trade four-fold, to $10
billion per year, potentially laying the foundation for further economic cooperation and even larger trade
flows. Is this a turning point in Indian-Pakistani relations? Will this scenario provide a data-point in
support of Mr. Cobden’s hypothesis; that India and Pakistan are on the path towards increased
economic integration and hence one step closer to stability and peace?
2NC
CP
It’s inevitable
Khan 7/24 (Mubin S., Special Correspondent of New Age, a leading Bangladeshi newspaper, graduate of the Graduate School
of Journalism at Columbia University, The Guardian, July 24, 2013, “US manufacturing and the troubled promise of reshoring,”
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jul/24/us-manufacturing-troubled-promise-reshoring, alp)
The buzz has been growing to a point of headiness: American giants including Apple, General Electric, Ford,
Chrysler, Whirlpool, Lenovo and Caterpillar have all started setting up new plants or reinvesting
in old plants in the US. The B oston C onsulting G roup predicted that up to 5 million manufacturing
and related service jobs will be returning by 2020." The White House promised last year that major
American companies like Ford will invest $16bn at home and add 12,000 jobs in the US by 2015.
The president praised companies like Master Lock for revitalizing America's economy. "Right now we have an excellent opportunity
to bring manufacturing back – but we have to seize it," the president said last year.
The industry’s empirically resilient
WSJ 11 (Wall Street Journal. 2/25/11. "The Truth About U.S.
Manufacturing."online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104576122353274221570.html.html#articleTabs%3Darticle)
Is American manufacturing dead? You might think so reading most of the nation's
editorial pages or watching the endless laments in the news that "nothing is made in America anymore," and that our
manufacturing jobs have vanished to China, Mexico and South Korea. Yet the empirical evidence tells a
different story–of a thriving and growing U.S. manufacturing sector, and a country
that remains by far the world's largest manufacturer. This is a particularly sensitive topic in my
hometown of Flint, Mich., where auto-plant closings have meant lost jobs and difficult transitions for the displaced. But while
it's true that the U.S. has lost more than seven million manufacturing jobs since the
late 1970s, our manufacturing output has continued to expand. International data
compiled by the United Nations on global output from 1970-2009 show this
success story. Excluding recession-related decreases in 2001 and 2008-09, America's manufacturing output has continued to
increase since 1970. In every year since 2004, manufacturing output has exceeded $2
trillion (in constant 2005 dollars), twice the output produced in America's factories in the
early 1970s. Taken on its own, U.S. manufacturing would rank today as the sixth
largest economy in the world, just behind France and ahead of the United
Kingdom, Italy and Brazil. In 2009, the most recent full year for which international data are available, our
manufacturing output was $2.155 trillion (including mining and utilities). That's more than 45% higher than China's, the country we're
Despite recent gains in China and elsewhere, the U.S. still
produced more than 20% of global manufacturing output in 2009. The truth is that
America still makes a lot of stuff, and we're making more of it than ever before.
We're merely able to do it with a fraction of the workers needed in the past. Consider
supposedly losing ground to.
the incredible, increasing productivity of America's manufacturing workers: The average U.S. factory worker is responsible today for
Increases in productivity are a
direct result of capital investments in productivity-enhancing technology, such as GM's
more than $180,000 of annual manufacturing output, triple the $60,000 in 1972.
next generation Ecotec engine. These increases are a direct result of capital investments in productivity-enhancing technology, which
last year helped boost output to record levels in industries like computers and semiconductors, medical equipment and supplies,
pharmaceuticals and medicine, and oil and natural-gas equipment.
2NC – Solves Aff
Relations solve the aff – global influence
Kunsheng 12 – Zhang Kunsheng, Assistant Foreign Minister and Senior Fellow of the
China Institute of International Studies, (“On Strengthening China’s Relations with Latin
American and Caribbean Countries under New Situation”, 10/30/12,
http://www.ciis.org.cn/english/2012-10/30/content_5446364.htm, AW)
First, with the growing need for mutual reliance, the political foundation of the relations
between China and Latin America and the Caribbean is getting increasingly solid. As the
largest developing country and an important developing region, China and Latin America
and the Caribbean are important parts of international emerging forces and are positive forces
to promote a multi-polar world and the democratization of international relations. Facing
complex and volatile global and regional situation, China and Latin America treat and
strengthen mutual relations from a strategic perspective, and maintain high-level exchanges,
therefore political mutual trust between them is deepening. Since 2003, Chinese President
Hu Jintao, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Wu
Bangguo, Premier of the State Council Wen Jiabao, Chairman of the National Committee
of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Jia Qinglin and other Chinese
leaders have visited Latin America and the Caribbean several times. Leaders of 21
countries having diplomatic relations with China have visited China. Additionally, leaders
of both sides often meet on multilateral occasions such as the General Assembly of the UN,
the G20 Summit, the APEC Leaders’ Informal Meeting and the BRICS Leaders’
Meeting. Through these high-level exchanges, political mutual trust between China and Latin
America and the Caribbean is further consolidated and strengthened, and the exchanges at all
levels between the two sides are conducted vigorously, thus playing an important role in
ushering in mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields. The positioning of the relations
between China and Latin American and Caribbean countries has been elevated
constantly, and the dialogue and cooperation mechanism is improving. China has
established a comprehensive strategic partnership with Brazil, strategic partnerships with
Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Chile, and a strategic partnership for common development
with Venezuela. China has established a mechanism of comprehensive strategic dialogue at the
foreign minister level with Brazil and a mechanism of strategic dialogue at the vice
foreign minister level with Mexico. China has built up bilateral high-level cooperative
mechanisms with Venezuela, Mexico and Brazil, and politicalconsultation mechanisms
between foreign ministries with 21 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean which
have diplomatic ties with China. China has signed a joint action plan and a ten-year
cooperation plan with Brazil and formulated a joint action plan with Mexico, further
strengthening the strategic planning and guidance on the development of bilateral relations.
Both sides show mutual understanding and provide mutual support on issues concerning
each other’s core and major interests. China supports Latin American and Caribbean
countries in their efforts to explore development paths suited to their national conditions.
China gives them firm support on major issues concerning national sovereignty and territorial
integrity, fully accommodates the concerns of the Caribbean island nations over issues
like climate change and calls on the international community to give them support. The
governments of Latin American and Caribbean countries having diplomatic relations with China
have given their consistent understanding and support to China on the issues of Taiwan, Tibet
and Xinjiang, firmly supported China in holding the Beijing Olympic Games and the
Paralympic Games, and actively participated in the Shanghai World Expo. Both sides
maintain close contacts and coordination on world affairs. With the transformation of the
international system, China and Latin America and the Caribbean have found more
strategic consensus and shared interests in areas such as global governance, international
financial system reform, and the decision-making power of developing countries in
international affairs. In the frameworks of international organizations and multilateral
mechanisms such as the UN, WTO, APEC, G20, BRICS and BASIC, China and Latin
America and the Caribbean are coordinating more closely, further enhancing the global
influence and strategic significance of their cooperation . The trend of the overall
cooperation between China and Latin America and the Caribbean is gaining momentum.
China has always supported the integration and unity of Latin America and the
Caribbean, actively developing relations with regional organizations in Latin America
and the Caribbean. It has established consultation mechanisms with the Rio Group,
MERCOSUR and the Andean Community, and set up a regular foreign ministers’
dialogue mechanism with the CELAC Troika. It is proposing to establish a China-Latin
America and the Caribbean cooperation forum, and actively exploring to hold a ChinaLatin America and the Caribbean leaders’ meeting at an appropriate time. The Chinese
side is also exploring to establish relations with the integrated organizations in Latin
America and the Caribbean such as UNASUR and the Pacific Alliance of Latin America.
The move is responded positively by the countries in this region.
2NC – Resource Lashout
Plan causes Beijing lashout – perceived as incursion on key resources
Lettieri 05 – Michael Lettieri, Council of Foreign Relations Research Associate,
(“BUSH GOES TO BEIJING, CHINA GOES TO LATIN AMERICA”, 11/14/05,
http://www.coha.org/bush-goes-to-beijing-china-goes-to-latin-america/, AW)
Indeed the PRC has powerful motivations for such courtships: as China has industrialized its
strategic ties to Latin America have grown. Demonstrably, the region has assumed an
increasing importance as a source for vital agricultural and mineral resources. Beijing
aggressively seeks growth and expansion , and despite the altruistic and fraternal tones taken
in its trade agreements, it is far from an eleemosynary gesture. Since it is possible that
China’s neocolonial investment strategy could result in crises similar to those which traditionally
have involved comparable U.S. interests in the past, it is possible that China could also
emulate Washington’s provocative practices to protect its newfound engagements. As
Beijing moves through the early stages of establishing close working arrangements with Latin
American militaries, China is perhaps readying itself to ensure that its economic and strategic
interests are being safeguarded in the event that regional developments threaten the significant
funds it is now beginning to invest in such countries as Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil and
Argentina. In examining these ties, it helps to recall earlier U.S. strategies that led to
various categories of intervention in such countries as Cuba, Chile, El Salvador,
Nicaragua and Panama, where an important military factor eventually came into play.
This is not to say that China will necessarily exactly emulate past U.S. behavior, but that
it may unwittingly find itself heading down that road. China’s Grand Ambitions Before
assessing Latin America’s relationship with China, it is crucial to first examine the
framework of Beijing’s operating style in order to understand how the region fits into
those plans. China’s growth into a global power was propelled by conscious and aggressive
government policies that sought to diffuse the country’s influence around the world. According
to the 2004 Congressional Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic
of China, “China’s aspirations and efforts to achieve great power status have accelerated in
recent years,” and PRC party officials have declared the following goals: “double the
2000 gross national product by 2010 [and] further develop the structure of the national
economy by 2020…” In order to achieve these desiderata, the report noted, China has
adapted a foreign policy strategy “for the developing world [that] seeks to expand the scope and
depth of its relationships, primarily as a means to secure access to natural resources and
markets.” In this sense, Chinese ventures in the Western Hemisphere are to be paralleled by
the continual expansion of PRC interests in Central Asia and Africa, among other regions,
and are being driven by a clear national vision of economic growth. Thus, to guarantee
future economic expansion, Beijing must establish secure sources for important raw materials to
fuel its now spiking industrial development. Economic growth, however, is simply one
component of Beijing’s larger strategy to increase the country’s “comprehensive national
power” (CNP), a concept that calibrates national strength as the combination of numerous measures. The idea was loosely described by analyst Michael Pillsbury in 2000, as considering “a variety of
factors, such as territory, natural resources, military force, economic power, social conditions, domestic government, foreign policy, and international influence. CNP is the aggregate of all these factors.” To that end,
the (U.S.) 2004 Report to Congress on PRC Military Power noted that, “Ensuring domestic stability and a secure international environment is crucial to Beijing’s national development strategy.” The PRC also views
the Taiwan issue as highly important to its CNP, and in its quest to delegitimize the island’s self-proclaimed independent government, Latin America holds particular importance. Of the 26 countries that still
recognize Taiwan as a free-standing nation, half are found in Latin America or the Caribbean. The PRC’s aggressive aid and investment packages have successfully influenced some countries to switch their
allegiances. The Congressional Research Report on China’s involvement in Latin America noted that “…in 2004, Dominica severed relations with Taiwan after Beijing trumped Taiwan’s $9 million in assistance
with a pledge of $122 million in assistance to the tiny country over six years.” Latin America’s Strategic Importance to China As China’s economy has boomed, racking up continuous growth rates of 9%, and its
population has become increasingly urbanized, the country’s need for raw materials has skyrocketed. The need was exacerbated by the decision to become a fully motorized consumer economy, meaning that in short
order China would require in the order of twice of its present level of consumption of petroleum. It is relevant to note that today China is the third largest manufacturer of automobiles in the world
.
Therefore, it is not surprising that according to the Washington Post, Beijing has estimated
that by 2020 the country would need 600 million tons of crude oil annually. Furthermore, it is
noteworthy that in a report in February’s issue of Poder magazine, “China has displaced the
United States as the world’s largest consumer of most industrial raw materials, including
copper, aluminum, nickel, platinum, and iron ore.” An Embarrassment of Riches Latin
America offers in abundance many of those key resources now coveted by China, and its
history and experience of serving as a raw-goods-exporting economic enclave for the
industrialized metropolis – be it Spain, the U.K. or the U.S., has been at different stages
of its history – further enhances the region’s appeal to Beijing. In its eagerness to secure
access to the Latin American resources it so prizes, the PRC has skillfully wielded its
economic “soft power” to convince regional governments to amicably open up their
countries to Chinese penetrations. Not that much persuasion was necessary, considering the
desire of countries like Brazil to find an outside foreign partner capable of counterbalancing
the U.S . China has thus been able to invest heavily in the region in a remarkably short period of time. According to a Congressional Research Report by Kerry Dumbaugh and Mark P. Sullivan, Chinese
private sector direct investment in the region is significant: at $1.04 billion it constitutes more than a third of China’s overall direct investment worldwide. Furthermore, the PRC has approximately $1 billion in
investments in Venezuelan oil production, and has promised much more to other countries in the region. In 2004, China pledged $275 million for improvements to Argentina’s infrastructure, and, according to Poder
magazine, it also offered Brazil “$8 billion for railways, $6 billion for low cost housing, $5 billion for hydrocarbons, $450 billion for communications, and $260 billion for satellites.” While few of those promises
have yet to begun to be met, their nature is not widely different from, say, infrastructural programs carried out in early 20th century Cuba by the post-independence American occupying administration, or by the
Kennedy-era Alliance for Progress. Such projects were designed to primarily further U.S. economic aims by improving the investment environment in a given regional country, while simultaneously cultivating the
appearance of being a good neighbor. While its investments have been noticeably generous, China’s eagerness to pump money into some regional projects does not necessarily represent an unmitigated good. It is,
perhaps, simply more of the same for Latin America. While positive changes may result from the new and brimming Sino-Latin American economic engagement, such investments do not necessarily adequately
address or change underlying problems of social injustice, unequal income distribution, crippling unemployment or macroeconomic dependency, and must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine whether
they are entirely kosher. Rhetoric aside, Chinese planners assuredly do not concern themselves with such matters. As Beijing almost myopically pursues its economic and political goals, it runs the risk of
inadvertently irritating the countries which it already tries to utilize for such ends. Already, questions are being raised locally about both the social displacement and environmental destruction being caused by
commercial soy bean cultivation in Paraguay and Brazil – production fueled by China’s relentless demand for the product. Elsewhere, Peruvian workers at the Chinese-owned Shougang Hierro mine launched a two
day strike this summer over poor working conditions and low wages. Such examples underscore the concerns that can be raised about the consequential influence of Chinese investment on the decision-making
process in each country in which it is present. If China continues to stress commodity extraction at nearly any cost, in terms of environmental considerations or the sentiments of the local population – it could
engender new internal conflicts which may echo those faced by other metropole powers in the recent past. Strategic Defense Through Beijing’s Eyes Beijing places tremendous strategic value on economic resources.
The exigency of maintaining access to petroleum and other industrial materials that are essential to its continued growth has led the PRC to seriously commit itself to ensuring that the pipelines – physical and
metaphorical – remain open. Indeed, Beijing’s interests have now started to actually converge with Washington’s in one key area: political stability and the protection of investment. In spite of the fraternal tone taken
in Beijing’s communiqués, one must assume that its root interest is economic, and interpret Chinese military diplomacy in the region through this lens. For Washington, that is hardly new. Defense of economic
interests has always been a potent motivating factor in its Latin American policy and frequently has spurred military activism – as evidenced by regime changes or decisions to prop up endangered governments in
Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Panama, among a number of others in recent years. China could conceivably find itself involved in the same scenario as a possible result of its resource-driven economic
strategy. The 2004 Defense White Paper published by the Chinese government in conjunction with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), notes that “China’s basic goals and tasks in maintaining national security
are… [among others] to safeguard the interests of national development, promote economic and social development…and [to] steadily increase the overall national strength.”
But according to
the 2004 congressional report, the non-bellicose language of the Chinese White Paper “should
not cloak the ambitious nature of China’s national development program.” The U.S. report
went on to note that Beijing broadly perceives threats to its national security, and hostile acts
against the country’s foreign investment or economic interests abroad would certainly qualify as
such. Towards this end, Chinese economic linkages with Latin America have been paralleled by
a certain growth in the military relationship between the two geographical areas. Hand in
Hand The meteoric deterioration of the quality of U.S. regional engagement during the Otto
Reich-Roger Noriega era of ideological supremacy, helped open the door for opportunistic
PRC probes throughout the hemisphere. As it advanced its economic aims in Latin America, it also has carefully established active, if low intensity, military
relations with the region’s armed forces. Such actions are in line with Beijing’s foreign military policy elsewhere in the world, where the country is pursuing primarily economic interests. The 2004 Congressional
Report observed that “in support of these goals, [expanding political influence and economic access] China’s global military engagement plays an important…role gaining access and influence with host country
governments.” Such military connections also have been accelerated by counter-productive U.S. foreign policy initiatives, specifically, the American Service-members Protection Act, which has effectively served to
sever ties between the U.S. and many Latin American armed forces. The growth in ties between regional militaries and the PLA is not unique to Latin America however. Military diplomacy, as such initiatives are
described, comprises a significant part of the PLA’s operations each year, and, while technically autonomous, does seem to correlate with Beijing’s larger economic and political strategies throughout the globe.
China’s 2004 Defense White Paper observed that the PLA carries out military cooperation “in line with the national foreign policy.” Such initiatives include high level visits with counterparts, joint exercises,
training, technological exchanges, and a variety of academic exchanges. This template certainly seems to be playing out with vigor in the Western Hemisphere. Although China has had only one established direct
instance of military linkage with the region as a result of sending 125 riot police to participate in the U.N.’s Haiti peacekeeping force, such an action seems to be indicative of a larger strategy in the future. A 2005
report by R. Evan Ellis of the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) commented that the involvement could “…be interpreted as part of a more long-term strategy through which China is pursuing a greater diplomatic
presence in the region, and an expanded voice in its politics.” This analysis rings true: however negative the popular perception of the U.S.-sponsored manipulation of Haitian developments has been in Latin
America, it is impossible to view the PLA’s presence there as anything other than a well-considered step towards establishing the precedent for future military engagements in a region that Beijing increasingly sees
as strategically important. A Multifaceted Relationship While certain aspects of the Chinese-Latin American military relationship remain unconsummated (there have been no major sales of equipment, and there is
only a scattered presence of Chinese troops on the ground), China assiduously has promoted military ties in the key areas of cooperation and exchange. Through still relatively small-scale military exchange programs
carried out between regional armed forces’ establishments and individually-tasked PLA officers, a modest bond has started to develop. Strengthened by cooperation agreements such as those signed between China,
Brazil and Venezuela, bilateral military ties are increasing, although they remain minimal. The relationship’s growth has been facilitated by generic cooperation agreements that are typically linked with increased
economic ties and are well received by Latin American leaders as one of the many benefits stemming from China’s now swelling engagement in the region. On a 2004 visit to China, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio
“Lula” da Silva sought an “across the board” consolidation of strategic relations including trade, scientific, cultural and military ties, according to the China Daily newspaper. Such interest has been reciprocated by
the Chinese military, which itself has also placed increased emphasis on ties with Latin America. Between 2003 and 2004, according to the PLA website, there were 15 visits to Latin American countries by PLA
officials that were described as “major military exchanges.” This was a fairly notable increase over the nine visits paid to the region from 2001-2002. The pace of integration has not slowed since 2004, as Chinese
President Hu Jintao’s December tour tightened Beijing’s relationship with the region. So far this year, a military delegation has visited Chile and Colombia in September, the director of the PLA’s General Political
Department has traveled to Venezuela and Argentina, and “goodwill visits” were made to Cuba and Mexico. For example, in assessing the significance of China’s military diplomacy with Argentina, the PLA’s
deputy chief of staff Zhang Li noted at an August 29 press conference in Beijing that, “the ties between the two militaries are an important part of the bilateral relations of the two countries…” An Elaborate Courtship
In the case of Brazil, Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong said in 2003 that “China and Brazil, as two friendly countries, carried out extensive cooperation in such fields as politics, trade, culture and military.” He
went on to add that “The friendly cooperation between the two countries benefited not only the two peoples but also the regional and world peace and development.” A PLA release quotes its chief of general staff as
observing that “…with the development of the Sino-Brazilian relations, the contacts between the two armed forces were increasing, the military forces had carried out friendly exchanges and cooperation in multifield [sic] and multi-level [sic]. For many years, the high-level visits between the two armed forces were steadily more frequent, which promoted the development of the relations between the two armed forces and
maintained a positive approach toward promoting the bilateral friendly and cooperative ties.” According to a Henry L. Stimson Center report, since the mid 1990s the Chinese National Defense University has hosted
a number of Brazilian students for two to three month terms, a program that has likely grown since then, as the two countries move towards tighter integration in various non-military fields. “Cooperative ties” have
taken many forms, but the sentiment behind them is the same. Chile has also established a close relationship which, according to Ellis’ report, includes “attendance by Chilean officers at the National Defense
University of China,” and “Chinese representation at the Chilean War College.” This spring, select officers at the Chilean War College began studying Mandarin Chinese under the tutelage of Captains Sun Xintang
and Zao Xitao. According to the Chilean Army’s website, the chief objective of the course is not just “to provide linguistic knowledge,” but to educate the officers on “cultural aspects of China; fundamental speaking
” Venezuela and China also have tightened their
military bonds in recent years. In August of 2005, Caracas purchased three military grade
radar systems from Beijing. The radars, and the included command center, were designed
and writing skills; grammar and comprehension necessary to achieve fluid communication.
to significantly enhance Venezuela’s ability to manage its airspace. These overtures have
their roots in the major exchanges that have occurred between the two countries (seven
from 2000 to 2005), as well as a recent sale of uniforms to the Venezuelan military. A
2002 agreement establishing a system of academic cooperation between the two countries’
defense academies, indicates a further level of bilateral engagement . As relations between
Venezuela and the U.S. have soured, China seems to have taken advantage, and Beijing could be
close to establishing a potential master source to satisfy its oil thirst.
Peru and China also maintain active military exchanges, which according to the Peruvian
Defense Ministry, are targeted primarily at scientific and technological cooperation. A 1998 agreement sent $1 million in military assistance from China to Peru, and similar accords have since followed. In December of 2002, China signed a military aid agreement with Peru that resulted in the transfer to Lima of $740,000 worth of military supplies, namely
buses and ambulances. A December 2004 deal formalized that relationship and extended it through 2009, assuring that Peru will annually receive 6 million Yuan (approximately $740,000) worth of military equipment from across the Pacific. A New School? According to remarks made by U.S. Southern Command chief General Bantz J. Craddock at a March
conference in Florida, there are growing contacts between Chinese and Latin American militaries, and that units from the region are increasingly training and spending time in the PRC. At a Senate subcommittee meeting, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs Charles Shapiro commented that the State Department was
“watching closely increased [military] educational exchanges between China and several Latin American and Caribbean countries…” A State Department source suggested that while military contacts between the regions were currently “modest,” there were nevertheless “a number of [military] students going to school in China.” According to the source,
China seemed most interested in countries with which it has closer economic ties and trade relationships, and that the greatest number of exchanges seemed to be with countries that were more “strategically advanced,” namely Brazil, Argentina and Chile. An Uncertain Future It seems clear that the PRC and the PLA have undertaken military diplomacy as
part of a coherent effort to gain greater engagement with Latin America. This new military engagement on the part of Beijing clearly does not pose an overt threat to U.S. security. Such sorties largely have been limited to exchanges, and have not contained major arms deal components, and do not suggest a systematic Chinese attempt to penetrate the
hemisphere. Nor can they be seen as an attempt to undermine regional stability or directly confront the U.S., despite Representative Katherine Harris (R-FL) jejune remark that Chinese engagement “constitutes a threat to the relatively young democracies throughout the region, which in turn jeopardizes our vital strategic partnerships throughout the
hemisphere.” According to the Turkish Weekly News, at the recent Senate hearings, Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Pardo-Maurer recognized this, noting that there is nothing to suggest that “Chinese military activities in the Western Hemisphere, including arms sales, pose a direct conventional threat to the United
States or its allies.” Furthermore, China and the U.S. clearly have different security relationships with Latin America – differences defined by geographic and social realities: drugs and immigration questions obviously do not affect China with the magnitude that they do the U.S., and the nature and the modest scale of the PLA’s involvement reflects that.
Chinese Protection of Investment: A Threat to Whom? R. Evan Ellis notes that “China’s interest in securing access to the resources …through trade and investment give it a vested interest in the stability of the region,” but stability has often been a fleeting quality in Latin America, and the growing Chinese economic interests could, paradoxically, lead to
internal conflict. Because China seems to be, perhaps unwittingly, following a neocolonial path similar to (but not a pure mimic of) that taken by the U.S., it will likely begin to face similar challenges. Ellis rightly concludes that Beijing will undoubtedly be forced to eventually confront any threats to its growing investment, whether from an unfriendly
government or a subnational movement. While China traditionally has backed some insurgencies with which it shared ideological affinities, this era may have passed. To a Paraguayan farmer displaced by the expansion of a Chinese soy farm, or to the Peruvian miners unhappy over their living conditions, it little matters the color of the flag at corporate
headquarters. Beijing may ultimately be forced to confront regional backlashes to its investment, just as those with which other colonizers were eventually forced to respond. To this end, Chinese military involvement in the region can be interpreted not as the threat to U.S. security that some right-wing analysts are noisily perceiving, but should be simply
understood as merely another component of Beijing’s economic program – albeit one that perhaps raises the specter of neocolonial intervention and an improbable potential subversion of Latin American sovereignty. All this may amount to nothing more than hypothetical questions regarding purported misgivings over some possible strong-arming of local
elites by China. More likely – however remote the odds – it would be more logical to assume that in any clash of interest, Beijing will align with the government rather than dissident groups. Nevertheless, the implications of such postulations are strong. China could eventually need to protect its investment, and in doing so, may be forced to resort to its
regional military contacts, a concern which is amplified by the way in which China has paralleled its economic engagement with military diplomacy. The 2004 Congressional Report suggested that “from Beijing’s perspective, strategic ambiguity [regarding its policies and motives] – including strategic denial and deception – is a mechanism to influence the
policies of foreign governments and the opinions of the general public and elites in other countries.” R. Evan Ellis has hinted that, in spite of its proclaimed non-intervention doctrine, the PRC would have no moral qualms about actively manipulating politics and opinion in a given Latin American country such as Colombia, Peru or Chile as a means of
guaranteeing that their economic concerns are protected. In this schema of neocolonial strategy, military ties could prove to be a valuable, if an adjunct tool. Marching in Step with History? U.S. links to Latin American militaries have long been condemned by groups that rightly feel that such relationships could pose a threat to authentic sovereignty. Military
diplomacy does indeed promote “understanding,” but it may go beyond simply broadening the worldview of each nation’s uniformed services. Exchanges among the regional armed forces promote an understanding of the investing nation’s economic and political motivations, as well as, more perniciously, perhaps engendering a capability to play to those
interests for personal or professional gain. History has demonstrated that the potential for compromising sovereignty exists through both indirect and direct channels. First, if officers are exposed to overly politicized indoctrination (i.e. the School of the Americas) they may be more inclined to act on their own or some extra-regional initiative if they perceive
. Secondly, closer military links facilitate the support and acceptance by
military coup governments and may encourage a metropolis to push for armed action if its
interests are threatened. In the event that future developments force the PRC to defend
China’s economic interests, it may have recourse in the military, making the relationship
(currently meticulously being established) between the PLA and regional militaries an
invaluable strategic asset. As China’s investment in Latin America continues to grow, it will
necessarily emphasize regional stability and the protection of its investments. In doing so, it
may find itself in the position, unlikely enough, of having to flex its muscles to achieve an
economic end. The vehicle for such influence may well have a military aspect to it, and
sadly such a tactic could rely upon a great deal of precedence in Latin America.
an opportunity to profit by courting favor with an influential investing nation
2NC – Mexico Generic
Mexico cooperation high– just negotiated a contract with Nieto
– recent bilateral meeting prove – that’s
Bilateral relations coming now – recent meeting
XinHua 6/5 – XinHua News, (“China, Mexico upgrade relationship to comprehensive
strategic partnership”, Article Written for XinHua News, 6/5/13,
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-06/05/c_132431199.htm, AW)
MEXICO CITY, June 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Mexican
counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto Tuesday announced to upgrade the bilateral relationship to a
comprehensive strategic partnership. The Chinese president arrived in Mexico City earlier in
the day for a three-day state visit aimed at lifting the China-Mexico strategic partnership to a
higher level, and held talks with Pena Nieto on bilateral cooperation. During the talks, the two
presidents agreed that strengthening the China-Mexico long-term friendly cooperation serves
the fundamental interests of the two countries and two peoples, and helps promote unity and
cooperation among developing countries. Xi said the decision to upgrade the bilateral
relationship is a realistic requirement, and it also sets a clear target for the development of
bilateral relations. Pena Nieto, for his part, said the upgrade of the Mexico-China ties
indicates that bilateral cooperation has entered a new stage. The Mexican side is ready to work
with China to constantly improve cooperation at higher levels and through more effective
mechanisms so as to achieve common development, he said. The two heads of state agreed
to push forward the China-Mexico comprehensive strategic partnership by working jointly
in the following four aspects. Firstly, the two sides will view their relations from a strategic and
long-term perspective and improve political mutual trust. The two countries will
accommodate each other's concerns, and show mutual understanding and support on
issues concerning each other's core interests. China and Mexico will maintain exchanges
between high-level leaders, political parties and legislatures, give full play to the existing
consultation and dialogue mechanisms, and improve coordination on each other's
development strategies. Secondly, the two sides will improve practical cooperation in
accordance with their development strategies, and agree to increase mutual investment in
key areas such as energy, mining, infrastructure and high technology. In order to promote
trade balance, China supports the increase of imports from Mexico, while Mexico
welcomes Chinese enterprises to invest here and promises to create favorable conditions
for Chinese investors. The two countries will also maintain exchanges and learn from
each other in such areas as poverty reduction, environmental protection and urbanization.
Thirdly, as two major countries with rich cultural traditions, China and Mexico will
improve cultural exchanges. Both countries will encourage more exchanges between art
troupes, promote tourism and strengthen communication among students, academics,
journalists and athletes. China will build a Chinese cultural center in Mexico City, the
first in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Mexico will establish a Mexican cultural
center in Beijing as well. Fourthly, China and Mexico will improve multilateral
coordination based on their common interests and responsibilities on major international
issues. The two countries will maintain close communication and coordination on global
economic governance, energy security, food safety and climate change. They will help
developing countries gain a bigger voice in the international community, and safeguard
the common interests of the two countries and the developing nations. China and Mexico
support the establishment of the China-Latin America forum and promote the overall
cooperation between China and Latin America at a higher level. After their talks, Xi and
Pena Nieto signed a joint statement between the two countries, witnessed the signing of a
host of agreements and jointly met the press.
2NC – Mexico A2 U/Q Outweighs Link
U/Q ≠ o/v link – cooperation now but no FTA
Diaz 6/4 – Lizabeth Diaz, Reporter for Reuters, (“China, Mexico vow broad
cooperation as Xi visits; no trade pact soon”, 6/4/13, http://news.yahoo.com/chinamexico-vow-broad-cooperation-xi-visits-no-012435019.html, AW)
China and Mexico promised broad cooperation on issues ranging from energy to mining and
infrastructure during a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday, but any freetrade pact between the emerging market powers is still some way off . Mexico's government
has voiced worry about its massive trade deficit with China, an imbalance Mexican President
Enrique Pena Nieto wants to set right. Mexico wants "to find a greater equilibrium in our
trade balance," Pena Nieto said during a joint address to the media with Xi. They did not
take questions. He said the two countries had also agreed to defuse a standoff over textiles
that had resulted in litigation. View gallery."China's President Xi attends a news
conference at Los … China's President Xi Jinping attends a news conference at Los Pinos
Presidential Palace in Mexico Ci … The two governments signed agreements to cooperate
on commercial defense, and agreed on access for Mexican tequila and Mexican pork to
the Chinese market. State oil monopoly Pemex said Export-Import Bank of China would
provide it with a $1 billion credit line to buy ships and offshore equipment. It also signed
a memorandum of understanding with state-owned Xinxing Cathay International Group
to explore ways to work together on pipelines. More than 15 percent of Mexico's imports
came from China in 2012 - an amount worth $57 billion - while just 1.5 percent, or $5.7
billion, of Mexican exports went to the Asian giant. Xi said China planned to sign
commercial contracts to buy an additional $1 billion worth of Mexican goods, but did not
specify what. Earlier on Tuesday, Mexican Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade said it
was too soon for a free-trade agreement between the two countries - something China is
eager to pursue.
Trade
Bluestein 8
Mexico, the United States, and Canada have each begun to reorient their foreign policy to focus
more attention on the Asia-Pacific region. The question now is whether they will pivot
individually or do so as members of a North American
strategic and
economic partnership
Plan doesn’t solve regional integration or TTP
KOTSCHWAR & SCHOTT 13 TPP as currently conceived may also disrupt
existing intra-American integration arrangements, with some countries and trade blocs left
out entirely. ¶ Such overlapping trade agreements and commitments among members and
nonmembers represent one stumbling block to a deal. Another is determining who to let in
and when. But if these issues are handled well, TPP will serve to update and expand existing
pacts, as well as reinforce their integration into global supply chains. Equally important
economic integration w/ Mexico inevtiable
Shifter 13 (Michael, Michael is an Adjunct Professor of Latin American Studies at Georgetown University's School
of Foreign Service. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and writes for the Council's journal Foreign
Affairs. He serves as the President of Inter-American Dialogue, “A More Ambitious Agenda” February 2013
http://www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/IAD9042_USMexicoReportEnglishFinal.pdf\\CLans)
Mexico and the United States have forged one of the strongest and most productive relationships in the
world. No two countries anywhere engage so intensely on a daily basis, cooperate across such a wide and
varied spectrum of issues, and affect the economy and society of the other so profoundly. No two
sovereign nations are more demographically and economically integrated. With annual cross-border
commerce of some $500 billion, Mexico is now the United States’ second largest trading partner. Some analysts project that it will
overtake Canada for the No. 1 position within the decade. Sales to Mexico make up twothirds of all US exports
to
Latin America. Mexico, in turn, sends 80 percent of its exports to the United States and purchases
nearly 60 percent of its imports from its northern neighbor. Substantial investment, too, flows in both directions. US investments
in Mexico have averaged $12 billion annually for the past dozen years, amounting to more than half of all
foreign investment in the country, according to the US State Department. In addition, families in the United States send more than $20
billion in remittances to Mexico each year. The North American Free Trade Agreement ( NAFTA), which joined the economies of
Mexico, the United States, and Canada in 1994, is today the world’s largest economic bloc, exceeding, albeit by a
small margin, the total output of the 27-member European Union. Demography also matters. Some 33 million US residents are of
Mexican origin. They make up more than 10 percent of the US population, nearly two-thirds of all Latinos, and around 7 percent of
American voters. While US political debates tend to spotlight unauthorized immigration, 80 percent of
Mexicans in the United States are legal residents. Still, illegal immigration may be the single most troubling issue in
US-Mexico relations, although changing migration patterns and the growing influence of Latino voters may offer solutions going
forward. Security has become an area of intense cooperation as Mexico grapples with an ongoing wave of brutal
crime and violence. The
United States and Mexico may not always agree on policy or strategy, but the
extensive collaboration among their police and security agencies is unprecedented. Indeed, the
bilateral agenda has seen cooperation flourish on almost every issue, with more opportunities emerging as
mutual interests deepen. Mexico and the United States are consistently finding new ways to complement
and reinforce one another in the global marketplace and on matters of regional and international
importance. Both governments have made clear a commitment to consolidate and enhance this
cooperation to fully leverage their inevitable and accelerating economic and demographic
integration. In many ways, the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico is complicated and conditioned by
the long and the bloody war on drugs. It's difficult to say exactly how many people have been killed in that
war, but Mexican media have estimated that around 70,000 people have died since 2006; many thousands more have
been disappeared. The United States has been closely involved, providing money, technology and
intelligence to the Mexican government.
Trade inevitable
Rajiv Kumar, 11/12/2008, Protectionism and Obama, p. http://www.mydigitalfc.com/opinion/protectionism-and-obama
President designate Obama, while he can, of course, take
the protectionist route, is unlikely to do so for several
appears to be strongly committed to reversing the decline in US's global prestige and
leadership that has happened during the Bush presidency, especially over the last four years. He cannot hope to achieve
this by leading the US away from globalisation and turning his back to US’s long-standing commitment to free
reasons. First, he
market for goods and services. This will seriously erode the legitimacy that Pax American enjoys at present. A protectionist move by
Obama presidency must surely imply the beginning of the end of the US economic hegemony in the world and accelerate the shift
away from the Atlantic basin to Asia. Second, US firms with overseas operations, especially in Asia, will for good
reason, resist
these moves as their competitiveness and indeed survival will be threatened. The loss of
unilateral
protectionist moves by the US will raise the spectre of competitive tariff escalation by its trading partners, which
will surely exacerbate the current crisis and make a world-wide depression that much more possible. There are more than
enough people within the US academia, and hopefully also within the administration, who can hammer
home the dangers inherent in such an approach and thus stop the Obama administration from going ahead in
the protectionist direction. Fourth and last, higher protection levels will imply ringing the death knell of the Doha Round and
competitiveness and eventual shutting down of these firms will also result in job losses within the US. Third, any
effectively also the near complete loss of World Trade Organisation's credibility and indeed legitimacy. I doubt if any US president
can precipitate such an eventuality. These factors will hopefully ensure that while there will be plenty of
threats, and perhaps even some calls from voluntary export restraints from the incoming administration, these will not be
carried forward to actual imposition of higher tariff or non-tariff walls by the US.
Trade wars won’t occur
Ziemba ‘9 (The Re-Emergence of Global Protectionism: A Newer Version of Smoot-Hawley?
Rachel Ziemba | Mar 4, 2009
probability of these measures becoming significant enough to lead to a trade war like
the 1930s might be low given that counties understand that retaliation effects will counterproductive for domestic growth and jobs. Moreover, the WTO surveillance mechanism, absent
during the 1930s, will help countries go to the WTO court if they face import barriers and thus
prevent trade wars.
However, the
China
China hates the plan – US aggression
Donald Gross 7/9 – Author, 'The China Fallacy'; Senior associate, Pacific Forum, Center for Strategic and
International Studies, (“Welcoming China to the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donaldgross/trans-pacific-partnership-china_b_3562801.html, AW)
At the time President Obama declared his strong support for creating this new Asia Pacific trade bloc in
November 2011, the administration envisioned it as
a way of countering China's economic rise as part
of the U.S. " pivot to Asia." Obama and U.S. officials coupled their advocacy of the TPP with a warning that the
U.S. was "growing increasingly impatient and frustrated with...Chinese economic policy and the
evolution of the U.S.-China economic relationship." They called on China to "play by the rules" and criticized
it for "gaming the system." In the words of David Pilling, a leading columnist for the Financial Times, the U.S. vision
TPP amounted to an "anyone-but-China club " which had the "unstated aim" of creating a
trade area "that excludes the world's second biggest economy." As a "comprehensive high-level agreement"
for the
among the 12 countries now in negotiations, the TPP would cover about 40 percent of global output and about onethird of world trade. Not surprisingly, many Chinese commentators initially saw the TPP as an instrument for
containing China. Beijing reacted to the U.S. announcement in the fall of 2011 by accelerating its own efforts to build a
new free trade pact called the "Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership" among the 10 ASEAN countries plus
five countries that have current free trade agreements with ASEAN -- South Korea, Japan, India, Australia, and New
Zealand. China also pushed ahead on negotiations to reach a trilateral trade agreement with Japan and South Korea as
well as a bilateral agreement with Seoul. The risk of the United States and China moving toward competitive Asian
trade blocs peaked in March 2013, when the U.S. persuaded Japan to join the TPP negotiations at a time of
mounting conflict with China over disputed island territories in the East China Sea. Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe declared that joining the TPP would strengthen Japan's "security" and emphasized the shared "values of
freedom, democracy, basic human rights and the rule of law" among TPP members. Abe failed to mention that the U.S.
previously invited Vietnam and Malaysia to join the TPP negotiations, though their governments infringe human rights
and curtail democracy as well as rely heavily on the state subsidies, controlled prices and state-owned enterprises that
are antithetical to the purposes of the new trade agreement.
Solves asia Pivot – China hates it
Shapiro 13 - President of the Institute of the Americas a public policy think tank at UCSD (Charles, "Time to shift focus in
relations with Mexico," San Diego Union Tribune, 2/6/13, web.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Feb/06/mexico-trade-economy/?#articlecopy )
While Washington focuses on a “pivot” to Asia, rebalancing our global priorities will prove
incomplete without a renewed commitment to our North American neighbors
Solves asia Pivot – China hates it
Shapiro 13 - President of the Institute of the Americas a public policy think tank at UCSD (Charles, "Time to shift focus in
relations with Mexico," San Diego Union Tribune, 2/6/13, web.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Feb/06/mexico-trade-economy/?#articlecopy )
While Washington focuses on a “pivot” to Asia, rebalancing our global priorities will prove
incomplete without a renewed commitment to our North American neighbors
China hates the plan – US aggression
Donald Gross 7/9 – Author, 'The China Fallacy'; Senior associate, Pacific Forum, Center for Strategic and
International Studies, (“Welcoming China to the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donaldgross/trans-pacific-partnership-china_b_3562801.html, AW)
At the time President Obama declared his strong support for creating this new Asia Pacific trade bloc in
November 2011, the administration envisioned it as
a way of countering China's economic rise as part
of the U.S. " pivot to Asia." Obama and U.S. officials coupled their advocacy of the TPP with a warning that the
U.S. was "growing increasingly impatient and frustrated with...Chinese economic policy and the
evolution of the U.S.-China economic relationship." They called on China to "play by the rules" and criticized
it for "gaming the system." In the words of David Pilling, a leading columnist for the Financial Times, the U.S. vision
TPP amounted to an "anyone-but-China club " which had the "unstated aim" of creating a
trade area "that excludes the world's second biggest economy." As a "comprehensive high-level agreement"
for the
among the 12 countries now in negotiations, the TPP would cover about 40 percent of global output and about onethird of world trade. Not surprisingly, many Chinese commentators initially saw the TPP as an instrument for
containing China. Beijing reacted to the U.S. announcement in the fall of 2011 by accelerating its own efforts to build a
new free trade pact called the "Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership" among the 10 ASEAN countries plus
five countries that have current free trade agreements with ASEAN -- South Korea, Japan, India, Australia, and New
Zealand. China also pushed ahead on negotiations to reach a trilateral trade agreement with Japan and South Korea as
well as a bilateral agreement with Seoul. The risk of the United States and China moving toward competitive Asian
trade blocs peaked in March 2013, when the U.S. persuaded Japan to join the TPP negotiations at a time of
mounting conflict with China over disputed island territories in the East China Sea. Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe declared that joining the TPP would strengthen Japan's "security" and emphasized the shared "values of
freedom, democracy, basic human rights and the rule of law" among TPP members. Abe failed to mention that the U.S.
previously invited Vietnam and Malaysia to join the TPP negotiations, though their governments infringe human rights
and curtail democracy as well as rely heavily on the state subsidies, controlled prices and state-owned enterprises that
are antithetical to the purposes of the new trade agreement.
Gerwin 13 - Senior Fellow for Trade and Global Economic Policy for the Third Way Economic Program (Ed, “Rooting for
Canada and Mexico in the TPP,” Third Way, March 2013, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/672/Third_Way_Policy_Memo__Rooting_for_Canada_and_Mexico_in_the_TPP_.pdf )
As wages and costs in countries like China continue to rise, businesses are looking at
a broad matrix of factors in deciding where to locate or re-locate production. These
factors include transport and energy costs, proximity to markets and suppliers, skilled workers, legal enforcement, supply chain efficiency, and
re-shoring” to America makes increasing economic
sense–both for producers and for the overall U.S. economy
infrastructure.26 When judged on this broader basis, “
1NR
2NC – Impact Calc
Critique outweighs the aff:
Only scenario for solving extinction – the plan minsuderstands
conflict and plays with fire – ______________ – which causes
continued escalation – focusing on the structural factors that
make extinction possible is a pre-requisite – that’s Ahmed
2NC – Framework
Framework assumes the get their aff – they first must win
epistemology isn’t first
Interrogating the 1AC’s assumptions is more political than the
aff
David Grondin, Lecturer in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, holds a Ph.D. in Political
Science from the University of Quebec at Montreal, 2004, “(Re)Writing the “National Security State”: How and Why
Realists (Re)Built the(ir) Cold War”,
http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/ieim/IMG/pdf/rewriting_national_security_state.pdf, KENTUCKY
The political as well as democracy has been restricted by a lack of epistemological interrogation
Poststructuralism allows for a change of politics – theory can become practice
Poststructuralism allows for more effective and adaptive personal confronting of problems – this means
we access individual epistemological change
The political in the status quo dislikes epistemology – politics includes everyone
Rethinking
the Political
from a Poststructuralist Stance [O]ur political imagination
has been restricted by our uncritical
acceptance of our own
rhetorical construction democracy,
– needs to be rhetorically reconstructed to
serve the needs of globalism as different nations struggle toward their own definitions, policies,
and prac- tices . The first step in such a rhetorical recons- truction is to become aware of our
of
a construction that pri- vileges free-enterprise capitalism and republicanism. Such a construction – limiting, as it does, our ability to understand b oth o urselves and others
own language choices and the narratives and assumptions embedded in these choices
(Medhurst, 2000: 16).
A poststructuralist approach to international relations reassesses the
nature of the political . Indeed, it calls for the repoliticization of practices of world politics that
have been treated as if they were not political. For instance, limiting the ontological elements in
one’s inquiry to states or great powers is a political choice . As Jenny Edkins puts it, we need to
“bring the political back in” (Edkins, 1998: xii). For most analysts of International Relations, the
conception of the “political” is narrowly restricted to politics as practiced by politicians.
However, from a poststructuralist viewpoint, the “political” acquires a broader meaning,
especially since practice is not what most theorists are describing as practice. Poststructuralism sees
theoretical discourse not only as discourse, but also as political practice. Theory therefore
becomes practice. The political space of poststructuralism is not that of exclusion; it is the
political space of postmodernity, a dichotomous one, where one thing always signifies at least one
thing and another (Finlayson and Valentine, 2002: 14). Poststructuralism thus gives primacy to
the political, since it acts on us, while we act in its name, and leads us to identify and differentiate
ourselves from others. This political act is never complete and celebrates undecidability, whereas
decisions, when taken, express the political moment. It is a critical attitude which encourages
dissidence from traditional approaches (Ashley and Walker, 1990a and 1990b). It does not represent one single
philosophical approach or perspective, nor is it an alternative paradigm (Tvathail, 1996: 172). It is a nonplace, a border
line falling between international and domestic politics (Ashley, 1989). The poststructuralist analyst questions
the borderlines and dichotomies of modernist discourses, such as inside/outside, the constitution
of the Self/Other, and so on. In the act of definition, difference – thereby the discourse of
otherness – is highlighted, since one always defines an object with regard to what it is not (Knafo,
2004). As Simon Dalby asserts, “It involves the social construction of some other person, group,
culture, race, nationality or political system as different from ‘our’ person, group, etc.
Specifying difference is a linguistic, epistemological and, most importantly, a political act;
it constructs a space for the other distanced and inferior from the vantage point of the
person specifying the difference” (Dalby, cited in Tvathail, 1996: 179). Indeed, poststructuralism
offers no definitive answers, but leads to new questions and new unexplored grounds . This
makes the commitment to the incomplete nature of the political and of political analysis so central to poststructuralism
(Finlayson and Valentine, 2002: 15). As Jim George writes, “It is postmodern resistance in the sense that while it is
directly (and sometimes violently) engaged with modernity, it seeks to go beyond the repressive, closed
aspects of modernist global existence. It is, therefore, not a resistance of traditional grand-scale
emancipation or conventional radicalism imbued with authority of one or another sovereign
presence. Rather, in opposing the large-scale brutality and inequity in human society, it is a
resistance active also at the everyday, com- munity, neighbourhood, and interpersonal
levels, where it confronts those processes that systematically exclude people from making
decisions about who they are and what they can be” (George, 1994: 215, emphasis in original). In
this light, poststructural practices are used critically to investigate how the subject of international
relations is constituted in and through the discourses and texts of global politics. Treating theory as
discourse opens up the possibility of historicizing it. It is a myth that theory can be abstracted from its socio-historical
context, from reality, so to speak, as neorealists and neoclassical realists believe. It is a political practice which
needs to be contextualized and stripped of its purportedly neutral status. It must be understood
with respect to its role in preserving and reproducing the structures and power relations
present in all language forms. Dominant theories are, in this view, dominant discourses
that shape our view of the world (the “subject”) and our ways of understanding it . Given my
poststructuralist inclinations, I do not subscribe to the positivistic social scientific enterprise which aspires to test
hypotheses against the “real world”. I therefore reject epistemological empiricism.
Since epistemology is
closely intertwined with methodology, especially with positivism, I eschew naturalism as a
methodology . I study discourses and discursive practices that take shape in texts. This does not mean that
there is no material world as such, only that it must be understood as mediated by language,
which in the end means that it is always interpreted once framed by discourse (through the spoken
word or in written form).2 “A discourse, then, is not a way of learning ‘about’ something out there in the ‘real
world’; it is rather a way of producing that some- thing as real, as identifiable, classifiable, knowable, and therefore,
meaningful. Discourse creates the conditions of knowing” (Klein quoted in George, 1994: 30). We
consider “real” what we consider significant: a discourse is always an interpretation, a narrative
of multiple realities inscribed in a specific social or symbolic order. Discursive representation
is therefore not neutral; individuals in power are those who are “authorized” to produce
“reality”, and therefore, knowledge
. In this context, power is knowledge and the ability to produce that which is considered “true”. A realist discourse will produce the socio- linguistic conditions that will allow it to correspond, in theory as in practice, to “reality”. Evidently, this “reality” will be nothing but the “realist discourse” that one has constituted
oneself. This is why, from a poststructuralist perspective, discourse may be considered as ontology3. Language is an autonomous system in which intertextuality makes many inter- pretations possible. Intertextuality, as Roland Barthes explains it, celebrates the “death of the author”: it is not the author who speaks, but the text, by referring to other texts, through the reader’s mind.4 The meaning of a text is thus enacted by the reader instead of being articulated passively in the text. Intertextuality assumes that a text can be read only in
relation to other texts, as an “intertext”. The reader will read the text by virtually reinterpreting texts he already read in light of this new text. Such an intertextual approach thus allows endless interpretations and readings: “[...] as relevant as sources are, the list of unknowable sources that inform a reader’s interpretation of a text is what makes inter- textuality a powerful social and personal experience” (Porcel, 2002: 150). Intertextuality and deconstruction are used in a complementary way. “Decons- truction ‘is’ a way of reading a
particular text, in which it is demonstrated that the ‘author’ fails to produce the logical, rational, construction of thought that was intended” (Brown, 1994: 1665). It is not a testable theory, nor a standard method; it is an ongoing ‘project’ (Butler, 2002: 28). It produces “stories”, not “theories”. In effect, in deconstruction, binary oppositions encoded in language and hierarchical antinomies hidden in discourse are revealed. It is thus assumed that the meaning of a concept can be revealed only in relation to at least one other term.
Deconstructing American Hegemonic Realist Discourses5 [S]ecurity studies can be understood as a series of discursive practices that provided the policy coordination that went with incorporation into the U.S. political sphere (Dalby, 1997: 19). In explaining national security conduct, realist discourses serve the violent6 purposes of the state, as well as legitimizing its actions and reinforcing its hegemony. This is why we must historicize the practice of the analyst and question the “regimes of truth” constructed by realist discourses.
When studying a given discourse, one must also study the socio-historical conditions in which it was produced. Realist analysts are part of the subfield of Strategic Studies associated with the Cold War era. Even though it faced numerous criticisms after the Cold War, especially since it proved irrelevant in predicting its end, this subfield retains a significant influence in International Relations – as evidenced, for instance, by the vitality of the journal International Security. Theoretically speaking, Strategic Studies is the field par
excellence of realist analyses: it is a way of interpreting the world, which is inscribed in the language of violence, organized in strategy, in military planning, in a military order, and which seek to shape and preserve world order (Klein, 1994: 14). Since they are interested in issues of international order, realist discourses study the balancing and bandwagoning behavior of great powers. Realist analysts believe they can separate object from subject: on this view, it would be possible to abstract oneself from the world in which one lives and
studies and to use value-free discourse to produce a non-normative analysis. As Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth assert, “[s]uch arguments [about American moderation and inter- national benevolence that stress the constraints on American power] are unpersuasive, however, because they fail to acknowledge the true nature of the current international system” (Brooks and Wohlforth, 2002: 31). Thus it would seem that Brooks and Wohlforth have the ability to “know” essential “truths”, as they “know” the “true” nature of the
international system. From this vantage point it would even be possible “to set aside one’s own subjective biases and values and to confront the world on its own terms, with the hope of gaining mastery of that world through a clear understanding that transcends the limits of such personal determinants as one’s own values, class, gender, race, or emotions” (Klein, 1994: 16). However, it is impossible to speak or write from a neutral or transcendental ground: “there are only interpretations – some stronger and some weaker, to be sure –
based on argument and evidence, which seems from the standpoint of the interpreter and his or her interlocutor to be ‘right’ or ‘accurate’ or ‘useful’ at the moment of interpretation” (Medhurst, 2000: 10). It is in such realist discourse that Strategic Studies become a technocratic approach determining the foundations of security policies that are disguised as an academic approach above all critical reflection (Klein, 1994: 27-28). Committed to an explanatory logic, realist analysts are less interested in the constitutive processes of states
and state systems than in their functional existence, which they take as given. They are more attentive to regulation, through the military uses of force and strategic practices that establish the internal and external boundaries of the states system. Their main argument is that matters of security are the immutable driving forces of global politics. Indeed, most realists see some strategic lessons as being eternal, such as balance of power politics and the quest for national security. For Brooks and Wohlforth, balance of power politics (which
was synonymous with Cold War politics in realist discourses) is the norm: “The result — balancing that is rhetorically grand but substan- tively weak — is politics as usual in a unipolar world” (Brooks and Wohlforth, 2002: 29). National security discourses constitute the “observed realities” that are the grist of neorealist and neoclassical realist theories. These theories rely upon U.S. material power (the perception of U.S. relative material power for neoclassical realists), balance of power, and the global distribution of power to explain
and legitimate American national security conduct. Their argument is circular since they depict a reality that is constituted by their own discourse, in addition to legitimizing American strategic behavior. Realists often disagree about the use of force – on military restraint versus military intervention, for example – but the differences pertain to strategies of power, that is, means as opposed to ends. Realist discourses will not challenge the United States’ position as a prominent military power. As Barry Posen maintains, “[o]ne pillar of
U.S. hegemony is the vast military power of the United States. [...] Observers of the actual capabilities that this effort produces can focus on a favorite aspect of U.S. superiority to make the point that the United States sits comfortably atop the military food chain, and is likely to remain there” (Posen, 2003: 7). Realist analysts “observe” that the U.S. is the world hegemonic power and that no other state can balance that power. In their analyses, they seek to explain how the United States was able to build and lead coalitions in
Afghanistan and Iraq with no other power capable of offering military resistance. Barry Posen “neutrally” explains this by em- phasizing the United States’ permanent preparation for war: I argue that the United States enjoys command of the commons—command of the sea, space, and air. I discuss how command of the commons supports a hegemonic grand strategy. [...] Command means that the United States gets vastly more military use out of the sea, space, and air than do others; that it can credibly threaten to deny their use to
others; and that others would lose a military contest for the commons if they attempted to deny them to the United States. Command of the commons is the key military enabler of the U.S. global power position. It allows the United States to exploit more fully other sources of power, including its own economic and military might as well as the economic and military might of its allies. Command of the commons has permitted the United States to wage war on short notice even where it has had little permanent military presence. This
was true of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the 1993 intervention in Somalia, and the 2001 action in Afghanistan (Posen, 2003: 7-9). Moreover, in realist theoretical discourses, transnational non-state actors such as terrorist networks are not yet taken into account. According to Brooks and Wohlforth, they need not be: “Today there is one pole in a system in which the population has trebled to nearly 200” (Brooks and Wohlforth, 2002: 29). In their system, only states are relevant. And what of the Al-Qaida terrorist network? At best, realist
discourses accommodate an interstate framework, a “reality” depicted in their writings as an oversimplification of the complex world in which we now live (Kratochwil, 2000).7 In their theoretical constructs, these analysts do not address national or state identity in any substantive way. Moreover, they do not pay attention to the security culture in which they as individuals are embedded8. They rarely if ever acknowledge their subjectivity as analysts, and they proceed as if they were able to separate themselves from their cultural
environment. From a poststructuralist perspective, however, it is impossible to recognize all the ways in which we have been shaped by the culture and environment in which we were raised. We can only think or experience the world through a cultural prism: it is impossible to abstract oneself from one’s interpretive cultural context and experience and describe “the world as it is”. There is always an interpretive dimension to knowledge, an inevitable mediation between the “real world” and its representation. This is why American
realist analysts have trouble shedding the Cold War mentality in which they were immersed. Yet some scholars, like Brooks and Wohlforth, consciously want to perpetuate it: “Today the costs and dangers of the Cold War have faded into history, but they need to be kept in mind in order to assess unipolarity accurately” (Brooks and Wohlforth, 2002: 30). The Language of Realism(s) What is at issue is how to deal appropriately with always already being part of a reality that cannot be described or grasped other than through interpretations and in relation to our practices, which are at the same time constituting it (Maja Zehfuss, 2002: 255). Neorealist and neoclassical realism offer themselves up as a narrative of the world institutional order. Critical approaches must therefore seek to countermemorialize “those whose lives and voices have been variously silenced in the process of strategic practices” (Klein, 1994: 28). The problem, as revealed in the debate between gatekeepers of the subfield of Strategic Studies (Walt, 1991), is that those analyses that contravene
the dominant discourse are deemed insignificant by virtue of their differing ontological and epistemological foundations. Approaches that deconstruct theoretical practices in order to disclose what is hidden in the use of concepts such as “national security” have something valuable to say. Their more reflexive and critically-inclined view illustrates how terms used in realist discourses, such as state, anarchy, world order, revolution in military affairs, and security dilemmas, are produced by a specific historical, geographical and sociopolitical context as well as historical forces and social relations of power (Klein, 1994: 22). Since realist analysts do not question their ontology and yet purport to provide a neutral and objective analysis of a given world order based on military power and interactions between the most important political units, namely states, realist discourses constitute a political act in defense of the state. Indeed, “[...] it is important to recognize that to employ a textualizing approach to social policy involving conflict and war is not to attempt to reduce
social phenomena to various concrete manifestations of language. Rather, it is an attempt to analyze the interpretations governing policy thinking. And it is important to recognize that policy thinking is not unsituated” (Shapiro, 1989a: 71). Policy thinking is practical thinking since it imposes an analytic order on the “real world”, a world that only exists in the analysts’ own narratives. In this light, Barry Posen’s political role in legitimizing American hegemonic power and national security conduct seems obvious: U.S. command of the
commons provides an impressive foundation for selective engagement. It is not adequate for a policy of primacy. [...] Command of the commons gives the United States a tremendous capability to harm others. Marrying that capability to a conservative policy of selective engagement helps make U.S. military power appear less threatening and more tolerable. Command of the commons creates additional collective goods for U.S. allies. These collective goods help connect U.S. military power to seemingly prosaic welfare concerns. U.S.
military power underwrites world trade, travel, global telecommunications, and commercial remote sensing, which all depend on peace and order in the commons” (Posen, 2003: 44 and 46). Adopting a more critical stance, David Campbell points out that “[d]anger is not an objective condition. It (sic) is not a thing which exists independently of those to whom it may become a threat. [...] Nothing is a risk in itself; [...] it all depends on how one analyses the danger, considers the event” (Campbell, 1998: 1-2). In the same vein, national
security discourse does not evaluate objective threats; rather, it is itself a product of historical processes and structures in the state and society that produces it. Whoever has the power to define security is then the one who has the authority to write legitimate security discourses and conduct the policies that legitimize them. The realist analysts and state leaders who invoke national security and act in its name are the same individuals who hold the power to securitize threats by inserting them in a discourse that frames national identity and
freezes it.9 Like many concepts, realism is essentially contested. In a critical reinterpretation of realism, James Der Derian offers a genealogy of realism that deconstructs the uniform realism represented in IR: he reveals many other versions of realism that are never mentioned in International Relations texts (Der Derian, 1995: 367). I am aware that there are many realist discourses in International Relations, but they all share a set of assumptions, such as “the state is a rational unitary actor”, “the state is the main actor in international
relations”, “states pursue power defined as a national interest”, and so on. I want to show that realism is one way of representing reality, not the reflection of reality. While my aim here is not to rehearse Der Derian’s genealogy of realism, I do want to spell out the problems with a positivist theory of realism and a correspondence philosophy of language. Such a philosophy accepts nominalism, wherein language as neutral description corresponds to reality. This is precisely the problem of epistemic realism and of the realism
characteristic of American realist theoretical discourses. And since for poststructuralists language constitutes reality, a reinterpretation of realism as constructed in these discourses is called for.10 These scholars cannot refer to the “essentially contested nature of realism” and then use “realism as the best language to reflect a self-same phenomenon” (Der Derian, 1995: 374). Let me be clear: I am not suggesting that the many neorealist and neoclassical realist discourses in International Relations are not useful. Rather, I want to argue that
these technicist and scientist forms of realism serve political purposes, used as they are in many think tanks and foreign policy bureaucracies to inform American political leaders. This is the relevance of deconstructing the uniform realism (as used in International Relations): it brings to light its locatedness in a hermeneutic circle in which it is unwittingly trapped (Der Derian, 1995: 371). And as Friedrich Kratochwil argues, “[...] the rejection of a correspondence theory of truth does not condemn us, as it is often maintained, to mere
‘relativism’ and/or to endless “deconstruction” in which anything goes but it leaves us with criteria that allows us to distinguish and evaluate competing theoretical creations” (Kratochwil, 2000 : 52). Given that political language is not a neutral medium that gives expression to ideas formed independently of structures of signification that sustain political action and thought, American realist discourses belonging to the neorealist or neoclassical realist traditions cannot be taken as mere descriptions of reality. We are trapped in the
production of discourses in which national leaders and security speech acts emanating from realist discourses develop and reinforce a notion of national identity as synony- mous with national security. U.S. national security conduct should thus be understood through the prism of the theoretical discourses of American political leaders and realist scholars that co-constitute it. Realist discourses depict American political leaders acting in defense of national security, and political leaders act in the name of national security. In the end, what
distinguishes realist discourses is that they depict the United States as having behaved like a national security state since World War II, while legitimating the idea that the United States should continue to do so. Political scientists and historians “are engaged in making (poesis), not merely recording or reporting” (Medhurst, 2000: 17). Precisely in this sense, rhetoric is not the description of national security conduct; it constitutes it. Writing the National Security State [F]rom the giddy days of the first and through the most morbid
moments of the Second Cold War, the popular culture, journalism, and academic study of international intrigue has been an important inter- text of power and play in world politics. This intertext represents a field of ideological contestation where national security strategies, with their end- games of impossibly real wars of mass annihilation can be played and replayed for mass consumption as a simulation of war in which states compete, in- terests clash, and spy counters spy, all in significant fun (Der Derian, 1992: 41). It is difficult to
trace the exact origins of the concept of “national security”. It seems however that its currency in policymaking circles corresponds to the American experience of the Second World War and of the early years of what came to be known as the “Cold War”. In this light, it is fair to say that the meaning of the American national security state is bound up with the Cold War context. If one is engaged in deciphering the meaning of the Cold War prism for American leaders, what matters is not uncovering the “reality” of the Cold War as such,
but how, it conferred meaning and led people to act upon it as “reality”. The Cold War can thus be seen as a rhetorical construction, in which its rhetorical dimensions gave meaning to its material manifestations, such as the national security state apparatus. This is not to say that the Cold War never existed per se, nor does it “make [it] any less real or less significant for being rhetorical” (Medhurst, 2000: 6). As Lynn Boyd Hinds and Theodore Otto Windt, Jr. stress, “political rhetoric creates political reality, structures belief systems, and
provides the fundamental bases for decisions” (Hinds and Windt, cited in Medhurst, 2000: 6). In this sense, the Cold War ceases to be a historical period which meaning can be written permanently and becomes instead a struggle that is not context-specific and not geared towards one specific enemy. It is “an orientation towards difference in which those acting on behalf of an assumed but never fixed identity are tempted by the lure of otherness to interpret all dangers as fundamental threats which require the mobilization of a
population” (Campbell, 2000: 227). Indeed, if the meaning of the Cold War is not context-specific, the concept of national security cannot be disconnected from what is known as the Cold War, since its very meaning(s) emerged within it (Rosenberg, 1993 : 277).11 If the American national security state is a given for realist analysts,12 it is important to ask whether we can conceive the United States during the Cold War as anything other than a national security state.13 To be clear, I am not suggesting that there is any such
essentialized entity as a “national security state”.14 When I refer to the American national security state, I mean the representation of the American state in the early years of the Cold War, the spirit of which is embodied in the National Security Act of 1947 (Der Derian, 1992: 76). The term “national security state” designates both an institutionalization of a new governmental architecture designed to prepare the United States politically and militarily to face any foreign threat and the ideology – the discourse – that gave rise to as well as
symbolized it. In other words, to understand the idea of a national security state, one needs to grasp the discursive power of national security in shaping the reality of the Cold War in both language and institutions (Rosenberg, 1993 : 281). A national security state feeds on threats as it channels all its efforts into meeting current and future military or security threats. The creation of the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council at the onset of the Cold War gave impetus to a state
mentality geared to permanent preparedness for war. The construction of threats is thus essential to its well-being, making intelligence agencies privileged tools in accom- plishing this task. As American historian of U.S. foreign relations Michael Hogan observes in his study on the rise of the national security state during the Truman administration, “the national security ideology framed the Cold War discourse in a system of symbolic representation that defined America’s national identity by reference to the un-American ‘other,’
usually the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or some other totalitarian power” (Hogan, 1998: 17) Such a binary system made it difficult for any domestic dissent from U.S. policy to emerge – it would have “amounted to an act of disloyalty” (Hogan, 1998: 18).15 While Hogan distinguishes advocates from critics of the American national security state, his view takes for granted that there is a given and fixed American political culture that differs from the “new” national security ideology. It posits an “American way”, produced by its
cultural, political, and historical experience. Although he stresses that differences between the two sides of the discourse are superficial, pertaining solely to the means, rather than the ends of the national security state, Hogan sees the national security state as a finished and legitimate state: an American state suited to the Cold War context of permanent war, while stopping short of a garrison state: Although government would grow larger, taxes would go up, and budget deficits would become a matter of routine, none of these and other
transformations would add up to the crushing regime symbolized in the metaphor of the garrison state. The outcome instead would be an American national security state that was shaped as much by the country’s democratic political culture as it was by the perceived military imperatives of the Cold War (Hogan, 1998: 22). I disagree with this essentialist view of the state identity of the United States. The United States does not need to be a national security state. If it was and is still constructed as such by many realist discourses, it is
because these discourses serve some political purpose. Moreover, in keeping with my poststructuralist inclinations, I maintain that identity need not be, and indeed never is, fixed. In a scheme in which “to say is to do”, that is, from a perspective that accepts the performativity of language, culture becomes a relational site where identity politics happens rather than being a substantive phenomenon. In this sense, culture is not simply a social context framing foreign policy decision-making. Culture is “a signifying part of the conditions of
possibility for social being, [...] the way in which culturalist arguments themselves secure the identity of subjects in whose name they speak” (Campbell, 1998: 221). The Cold War national security culture represented in realist discourses was constitutive of the American national security state. There was certainly a conflation of theory and policy in the Cold War military-intellectual complex, which “were observers of, and active participants in, defining the meaning of the Cold War. They contributed to portray the enemy that both
reflected and fueled predominant ideological strains within the American body politic. As scholarly partners in the national security state, they were instrumental in defining and disseminating a Cold War culture” (Rubin, 2001: 15). This national security culture was “a complex space where various representations and representatives of the national security state compete to draw the boundaries and dominate the murkier margins of international relations” (Der Derian, 1992: 41). The same Cold War security culture has been maintained
by political practice (on the part of realist analysts and political leaders) through realist discourses in the post-9/11 era and once again reproduces the idea of a national security state. This (implicit) state identification is neither accidental nor inconsequential. From a poststructuralist vantage point, the identification process of the state and the nation is always a negative process for it is achieved by exclusion, violence, and margina- lization. Thus, a deconstruction of practices that constitute and consolidate state identity is necessary: the
writing of the state must be revealed through the analysis of the discourses that constitute it. The state and the discourses that (re)constitute it thus frame its very identity and impose a fictitious “national unity” on society; it is from this fictive and arbitrary creation of the modernist dichotomous discourses of inside/outside that the discourses (re)constructing the state emerge. It is in the creation of a Self and an Other in which the state uses it monopolistic power of legitimate violence – a power socially constructed, following Max
Weber’s work on the ethic of responsibility – to construct a threatening Other differentiated from the “unified” Self, the national society (the nation).16 It is through this very practice of normative statecraft,17 which produces threatening Others, that the international sphere comes into being. David Campbell adds that it is by constantly articulating danger through foreign policy that the state’s very conditions of existence are generated18. Rewriting the National Security State If realists are now easily caricatured, they have only
themselves to blame. They had become caricatures by their own self-description. Realism, and parti- cularly its offshoot, strategic studies, helped make and was made by the Cold War (Booth, 1997: 92). Much of the Cold War state apparatus and military infrastructure remained in place to meet the challenges and threats of the post-Cold War era. If the attack on Pearl Harbor was the driving force of the postwar national security state apparatus (Stuart, 2003: 303), the 9/11 events have been used as a motive for resurrecting the national
security discourse as a justification against a new ‘infamy’, global terrorism.19 Although in this study I am calling into question the political practices that legitimized the very idea of a national security state during the Cold War era, I find even more problematic the reproduction of a similar logic in the post-9/11 era – a rather different historical and socio-political context. As Simon Dalby highlights, Coupling fears of Soviet ambitions, of a repeat of Pearl Harbor, and of nuclear war, these institutions formed the heart of a
semipermanent military mobilization to support the policies of containment militarism. If this context is no longer applicable, the case that the national security state is not an appropriate mode for social organization in the future is in many ways compelling. If security is pre- mised on violence, as security-dilemma and national-security literatures suggest (albeit often reluctantly), perhaps the necessity of rethinking global politics requires abandoning the term and the conceptual strictures that go with it (Dalby, 1997: 21). A recent
article by David Jablonsky in the U.S. Army War College’s journal Para- meters illustrates such an un-problematized view of a Cold War-like attitude of casting for new enemies and threats, such as global terrorism, that can justify a state of permanent war (Luke, 2002: 10): In those early years of the Cold War, American leaders fashioned a grand strategic vision of the US role in the world, which while innovative in terms of changing concept of national security, did not outrun the experiences of the American people as the Soviet
threat unfolded. US leaders face a similar challenge today as they seek to educate the public that the domestic terrorist threat to physical security should not be allowed to skew the American grand strategy of global engagement designed to further that core interest as well as those of economic prosperity and value promotion. [...] The new threat assures the continued existence if not growth of the national security state and will certainly cause increased centralization and intrusiveness of the US government. Nevertheless, the Cold War
demonstrates that all this need not cause the rise of a garrison state or the diminishment of civil liberties (Jablonsky, 2003: 18). What puzzles me is that this viewpoint reflects an unquestioned normative statecraft practice that might be seen not only as possible but “wise”, since “we” all know that, in the end, the Cold War led to an “American triumph”... From a critical standpoint, national security discourse is constitutive of “social reality”: it is not neutral and it often serves to outfit state actions as objective responses to socio-political
problems. U.S. state leaders now use this same discourse – the national security discourse – to wage a global war on ter- rorism. As Keith Shimko aptly points out, Times of war are no normal times. In addition to being periods of focused effort and all-out expenditure, ‘wartime’ might also be viewed as a period when some of the normal luxuries of life (e.g., material comfort or political liberties) are ‘sacrificed’ to the war effort. As a result, framing an issue as a war could lead to calls for restrictions on behavior and rights that are
typically protected but come to be viewed as unaffordable luxuries during wartime (Shimko, 1995:79). The U.S. response to 9/11 is encapsulated as an armed struggle against a phantom enemy who replicates the tactics used in guerrilla wars in its capacity to strike any time, anywhere. The enemy is thus constructed as being both everywhere and nowhere, which allows state leaders to enact a security discourse of an Other against whom the U.S. must be protected as a legitimate and necessary one at the expense of some civil rights (e.g.,
colour tags for travellers and fingerprint biometric sensors in passports). A “state of war” is indeed incorporated into American political life : “For a society committed to armed struggle, there is little distinction between military and civilian life. ‘The cause’ becomes everything, justifying extraordinary measures, demanding larger-than-life sacrifices. Ordinary life is recruited into the ruthless binary that frames the struggle [...]. There is no room for a loyal opposition; to question is to betray” (Milner, Krishna, and Ferguson, 2001). In
the context of a global war on terrorism, every citizen may become a “terrorist”. As Ronnie Lipschutz argues in After Authority: War, Peace, and Global Politics in the 21st Century, “[a]ll individuals, whether citizen or permanent resident, whether legal or illegal, become potential threats to state security” (Lipschtuz, 2000: 51). Surprisingly, not many American citizens contested or protested such undemocratic limitations on civil liberties. Why is that so? One possible answer is that a great many are convinced that such measures will
not be applied to them and that their own rights and freedoms will not be threatened. They seem to believe that since they are not doing anything wrong, they are protected. Accordingly, they think that those whose privacy and rights are being violated have done 19 20 something wrong and that they deserve it. As Iris Marion Young explains, this is where they err, for “[t]he move from a relatively free society to one over which the state exercises authoritarian domination often occurs by means of just this logic: citizens do not realize
how easily they may find themselves under suspicion by authorities over whose decisions there is no public scrutiny” (Young, 2003: 12). When societal and individual security is considered, the national security discourse produces more insecurity than security.20 We must therefore question state practices that threaten individuals, rendering the state a source of insecurity for its citizens : “[I]nsecurity, rather than being external to the object to which it presents a threat is both implicated in and an effect of the very process of
establishing and re-establishing the object’s identity” (Jutta Weldes, cited in Willey, 2002 : 29). National insecurity is thus revealed as the clear antonym of national security (Rosenberg, 1993 : 281 ; Der Derian, 1992: 75). Linguistically, “national insecurity” corresponds to the female and weak side of Cold War discourses (Tickner, 2001: 52 ; Peterson, 1992: 32). In effect, as Emily Rosenberg correctly observes, the power of national security linguistically comes from this binary opposition, where national security is empowered as
representing a “strong emotive and symbolic power” inscribed in the male national security statist discourse (Rosenberg, 1993: 281). The national security state thus functions as a protection racket. Consequently, whether looking inward or outward, it must be rejected for its very discourse necessarily entails the unequal logic of protector- protected (Young, 2003: 14-15, 21). To understand American hegemonic power then is to understand how the theoretical foundations of U.S. hegemony influence the way U.S. leaders think about
international politics generally and U.S. foreign policy in particular. As Marysia Zalewski points out, “[...] events in the world, issues in international politics, are not ontologically prior to our theories about them. This does not mean that people read about, say realism, and act accordingly, but that our (and by ‘our’ I mean theoriser/ global actors) dominant ways of thinking and acting in the world will be (re)produced as ‘reality’” (Zalewski, 1996: 350-51). The 9/11 attacks and the presence of a diffuse and transnational terrorist threat
has convinced American state leaders that threats may come from within as well as from abroad. In a Cold War-like national security mindset, separating domestic from international politics was “business as usual”: it required paying attention to foreign and external threats. With a homeland security focus, the “boundaries” of the national security state are exploding inwardly. The “enemy” is not a foreign Other anymore; he may be American or he may strike on American soil. As Donald Pease puts it, “Overall, 9/11 brought to the
light of day the Other to the normative representation of the United States. It positioned unheimlich dislocatees within the Homeland in place of the citizens who exercised rights and liberties on the basis of these normalizations. When the signifier of the Homeland substituted for the Virgin Land, the national security state was supplanted by the global state of emergency” (Pease, 2003: 17). The Other has become an undefined terrorist, with no specific territorial base. Just as Soviet communists were represented as barbaric, amoral, and
inhuman, so is today’s terrorist. Conclusion [B]ecause invoking security is a political act and the discourses that construct dangers and endan- gered subjects are far from natural or neutral reflections of an independent reality, the larger social and political contexts within such discourses are invoked should also be given analytical attention (Dalby, 2002: XXI). In this piece, I have sought to explain how (American) realist theoretical discourses are mainly representative of the American experience of the Cold War. I have treated these
historically-based discourses as political practices that frame and reproduce a national security state identity for the United States in the post-9/11 era. It is not the “reality” of the United States as a state that is cast in question by poststructuralists, but rather the way it is written as an unchanging and essentialized entity, as a national security state identity. Indeed, a state is always in the process of (re)construction; its identity is never fixed, nor is its legitimacy uncontested. As Campbell puts it, “with no ontological status apart from the
many and varied practices that constitute their reality, states are (and have to be) always in a process of becoming” (Campbell, 1998: 12). The poststructuralist approach adopted here made it possible to reveal the normative issues arising in such discourses. In sum, to understand how American or American-based realist discourses facilitated the social construction of a Cold War with the USSR after World War II, one must understand the security culture that allowed for the development of political practices that ushered in the
institutionalization of a national security state. On a more metatheoretical level, in International Relations, the poststructuralist/ postmodernist turn has made mainstream positivist scholars fear a lapse into complete relativism. As Christopher Butler points out, “Postmodernist relativism needn’t meant that anything goes. [...] What it does mean is that we should be more sceptically aware, more relativist about, more attentive to, the theoretical assumptions which support the narratives produced by all [scholars] (in the original quote,
Butler wrote “historians” for he was addressing historians), whether they see themselves as empiricists or deconstructors or as postmodernist ‘new historicists’” (Butler, 2002: 35). It is increasingly clear that realists of all guises in International Relations are more and more reluctant to take an inflexible position with respect to the ontological and epistemological assumptions underpinning the discipline. However, in viewing theory as practice, we recognize that
our choices
have a normative and political value which allows us to distinguish the important from the
incidental. As a result, what people see as the “real world” is implicitly bound up with the
epistemological, methodological and ontological stance they take in theoretical discourse. If
the national security discourse that made the Cold War possible – in American realist
discourses at least – is (re)applied to our own era, then a similar pattern of legitimizing and
constituting a national security state will be reproduced.
Predictable and fair – they choice their method they should
defend it
Education – the roll of the scholar is to question methodology
first – securitized methodology is unethical (because it prevents
solvency of structural violence by constructing military threats
that must be addressed)
Shampa Biswas 7 Prof of Politics @ Whitman “Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading Edward Said as an
International Relations Theorist” Millennium 36 (1) p. 117-125
The recent resuscitation of the project of Empire should give International Relations scholars particular pause.1 For a discipline long premised on a triumphant Westphalian
sovereignty, there should be something remarkable about the ease with which the case for brute force, regime change and empire-building is being formulated in widespread
commentary spanning the political spectrum. Writing after the 1991 Gulf War, Edward Said notes the US hesitance to use the word ‘empire’ despite its long imperial history.2 This
hesitance too is increasingly under attack as even self-designated liberal commentators such as Michael Ignatieff urge the US to overcome its unease with the ‘e-word’ and
selfconsciously don the mantle of imperial power, contravening the limits of sovereign authority and remaking the world in its universalist image of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’.3
Rashid Khalidi has argued that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq does indeed mark a new stage in American world hegemony, replacing the indirect and proxy forms of Cold
War domination with a regime much more reminiscent of European colonial empires in the Middle East.4
empire has been mounted and a colonial project
The ease with which a defence of
so unabashedly
resurrected makes this a particularly
opportune , if not necessary, moment , as scholars of ‘the global’, to take stock of our disciplinary
complicities with power, to account for colonialist imaginaries that are lodged at the heart
of a discipline ostensibly interested in power but perhaps far too deluded by the formal equality of state sovereignty and
overly concerned with security and order. Perhaps more than any other scholar, Edward Said’s groundbreaking work in Orientalism
has argued and demonstrated the long and deep complicity of academic scholarship with colonial
domination.5 In addition to spawning whole new areas of scholarship such as postcolonial studies, Said’s writings have had considerable influence in his own discipline
of comparative literature but also in such varied disciplines as anthropology, geography and history, all of which have taken serious and sustained stock of their own participation
in imperial projects and in fact regrouped around that consciousness in a way that has simply not happened with International Relations.6 It has been 30 years since Stanley
Hoffman accused IR of being an ‘American social science’ and noted its too close connections to
US foreign policy elites and US preoccupations of the Cold War to be able to make any universal claims,7 yet there seems to be a curious
amnesia and lack of curiosity about the political history of the discipline, and in particular its own complicities in the
production of empire.8 Through what discourses the imperial gets reproduced, resurrected and re-energised is a
question that should be very much at the heart of a discipline whose task it is to examine the contours of global
power. Thinking this failure of IR through some of Edward Said’s critical scholarly work from his long distinguished career as an intellectual and activist, this article is
an attempt to politicise and hence render questionable the disciplinary traps that have , ironically,
circumscribed the ability of scholars whose
actually think globally and politically.
very
business it is to think about
global
politics to
What Edward Said has to offer IR scholars, I believe, is a certain kind of global sensibility, a critical
but sympathetic and felt awareness of an inhabited and cohabited world. Furthermore, it is a profoundly political sensibility whose globalism is predicated on a cognisance of the
imperial and a firm non-imperial ethic in its formulation. I make this argument by travelling through a couple of Said’s thematic foci in his enormous corpus of writing. Using a lot
of Said’s reflections on the role of public intellectuals, I argue in this article that IR
scholars need to develop what I call a ‘ global
intellectual posture’ . In the 1993 Reith Lectures delivered on BBC channels, Said outlines three positions for public intellectuals to assume – as an
as a disturber of the status quo speaking ‘truth to power’ and selfconsciously siding with those who are underrepresented and disadvantaged.9 Beginning with a discussion of Said’s
outsider/exile/marginal, as an ‘amateur’, and
critique of ‘professionalism’ and the ‘cult of expertise’ as it applies to International Relations, I first argue the importance, for scholars of global politics, of taking politics
seriously. Second, I turn to Said’s comments on the posture of exile and his critique of identity politics, particularly in its nationalist formulations, to ask what it means for students
of global politics to take the global seriously. Finally, I attend to some of Said’s comments on humanism and contrapuntality to examine what IR scholars can learn from Said
about feeling and thinking globally concretely, thoroughly and carefully. IR Professionals in an Age of Empire: From ‘International Experts’ to ‘Global Public Intellectuals’ One of
the profound effects of the war on terror initiated by the Bush administration has been
a significant constriction of a democratic
public sphere , which has included the active and aggressive curtailment of intellectual and political
dissent and a sharp delineation of national boundaries along with concentration of state power .
The academy in this context has become a particularly embattled site with some highly disturbing onslaughts
on academic freedom. At the most obvious level, this has involved fairly well-calibrated neoconservative attacks on US higher education that have invoked the
mantra of ‘liberal bias’ and demanded legislative regulation and reform10, an onslaught supported by a well-funded network of conservative think
tanks, centres, institutes and ‘concerned citizen groups’ within and outside the higher education establishment11 and with
considerable reach among sitting legislators, jurists and policy-makers as well as the media. But what has in part made possible the
encroachment of such nationalist and statist agendas has been a larger history of the corporatisation of the university and the
accompanying ‘professionalisation’ that goes with it. Expressing concern with ‘academic acquiescence in the
decline of public discourse in the United States’, Herbert Reid has examined the ways in which the university is beginning to operate as another
transnational corporation12, and critiqued the consolidation of a ‘culture of professionalism’ where academic
bureaucrats engage in bureaucratic role-playing, minor academic turf battles mask the
larger managerial power play on campuses and the increasing influence of a relatively autonomous
administrative elite and the rise of insular ‘expert cultures’ have led to academics relinquishing their
claims to public space and authority.13 While it is no surprise that the US academy should find itself too at that uneasy confluence of neoliberal globalising
dynamics and exclusivist nationalist agendas that is the predicament of many contemporary institutions around the world, there is much reason for concern and an
urgent need to rethink the role and place of intellectual labour in the democratic process. This is especially true for
scholars of the global writing in this age of globalisation and empire. Edward Said has written extensively on the place of the academy as
one of the few and increasingly precarious spaces for democratic deliberation and argued the necessity for public intellectuals immured
from the seductions of power.14 Defending the US academy as one of the last remaining utopian spaces, ‘the
one public space available to real alternative intellectual practices: no other institution like it on such a scale
exists anywhere else in the world today’15, and lauding the remarkable critical theoretical and historical work of many academic intellectuals in a lot of his work,
Said also complains that ‘the American University, with its munificence, utopian sanctuary, and remarkable diversity, has defanged (intellectuals)’16. The most
serious threat to the ‘intellectual vocation’, he argues, is ‘professionalism’ and mounts a pointed attack on the proliferation of ‘specializations’
and the ‘cult of expertise’ with their focus on ‘relatively narrow areas of knowledge’, ‘technical
formalism’, ‘impersonal theories and methodologies’, and most worrisome of all, their ability and willingness to be
seduced by power.17 Said mentions in this context the funding of academic programmes and research which came out of the exigencies of the Cold War18, an area
in which there was considerable traffic of political scientists (largely trained as IR and comparative politics scholars) with institutions of policy-making. Looking at
various influential US academics as ‘organic intellectuals’ involved in a dialectical relationship with foreign policymakers and examining the institutional relationships at and among numerous think tanks and universities
that create convergent perspectives and interests , Christopher Clement has studied US intervention in the
Third World both during and after the Cold War made possible and justified through various forms
of ‘intellectual articulation’ .19 This is not simply a matter of scholars working for the state,
but indeed a larger question of intellectual orientation. It is not uncommon for IR scholars to
feel the need to formulate their scholarly conclusions in terms of its relevance for global politics, where ‘relevance’ is
measured entirely in terms of policy wisdom. Edward Said’s searing indictment of US intellectuals – policy-experts and
Middle East experts - in the context of the first Gulf War20 is certainly even more resonant in the contemporary context preceding and
following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The space for a critical appraisal of the motivations and conduct of this war
has been considerably diminished by the expertise-framed national debate wherein certain kinds of
ethical questions irreducible to formulaic ‘for or against’ and ‘costs and benefits’ analysis
can simply not be raised. In effect, what Said argues for, and IR scholars need to pay particular heed to, is an
understanding of ‘intellectual relevance’ that is larger and more worthwhile, that is about the posing
of critical, historical, ethical and perhaps unanswerable questions rather than the offering of recipes and
solutions, that is about politics (rather than techno-expertise) in the most fundamental and
important senses of the vocation .21
The impact to framework is they must defend their entire
method and don’t get the permutation
Reject the argument not the team
2NC – Epistemology First
The roll of the ballot is to question the epistemology of the 1AC
– if we win that it sucks it should be rejected – we don’t have to
win that it was totally worthless but rather that it was of such
poor quality the aff should be forced to re-write its 1AC
Education – Forces good research skills and evidence quality
as well as the underlying assumptions of the 1AC
Decision Making – fosters one to read only positions they can
advocate or learn to advocate – only portable skill
A-priori for policy debate – it’s the fundamental political
question
-
Our lack of epistemological interrogation limits our ability to solve global
problems
- Policymakers dislike epistemology – studies prove
- Metaphysics first
- No cede of political
- Research and scholarly writing lead to political change
Questions key to politics
Reus-Smit 12 – Professor of International Relations at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy (Christian,
“International Relations, Irrelevant? Don’t Blame Theory”, Millennium - Journal of International Studies June 2012 vol. 40 no. 3 525540,)
notion that IR’s lack of practical relevance stems from excessive
theorising rests more on vigorous assertion than weighty evidence . As noted above, we lack good
data on the field’s practical relevance, and the difficulties establishing appropriate measures are all too apparent in the
However widespread it might be, the
fraught attempts by several governments to quantify the impact of the humanities and social sciences more generally. Beyond this,
we lack any credible evidence that any fluctuations in the field’s relevance are due to more
or less high theory. We hear that policymakers complain of not being able to understand or apply much that appears in our leading
though,
journals, but it is unclear why we should be any more concerned about this than physicists or economists, who take theory, even high
theory, to be the bedrock of advancement in knowledge. Moreover, there is now a wealth of research, inside and outside
IR, that
shows that policy communities are not open epistemic or cognitive realms , simply awaiting
well-communicated, non-jargonistic knowledge – they are bureaucracies, deeply susceptible to groupthink, that
filter information through their own intersubjective frames. 10 Beyond this, however, there are good reasons to believe that
precisely the reverse of the theory versus relevance thesis might be true; that theoretical inquiry
may be a necessary prerequisite for the generation of practically relevant knowledge . I will
focus here on the value of metatheory, as this attracts most contemporary criticism and would appear the most difficult of theoretical
forms to defend. Metatheories take other theories as their subject. Indeed, their precepts establish the conditions of possibility for
second-order theories. In general, metatheories divide into three broad categories: epistemology, ontology and meta-ethics. The first
concerns the nature, validity and acquisition of knowledge; the second, the nature of being (what can be said to exist, how things
might be categorised and how they stand in relation to one another); and the third, the nature of right and wrong, what constitutes
moral argument, and how moral arguments might be sustained. Second-order theories are constructed within, and on the basis of,
assumptions formulated at the metatheoretical level. Epistemological assumptions about what constitutes legitimate
knowledge and how it is legitimately acquired delimit
the questions we ask and the kinds of information we
can enlist in answering them. 11 Can social scientists ask normative questions? Is literature a valid source
of social-scientific knowledge? Ontological assumptions about the nature and distinctiveness of the social universe affect
not only what we ‘see’ but also how we order what we see; how we relate the material to the ideational, agents
to structures, interests to beliefs, and so on. If we assume, for example, that individuals are rational actors,
engaged in the efficient pursuit of primarily material interests, then phenomena such as faith-motivated
politics will remain at the far periphery of our vision . 12 Lastly, meta-ethical assumptions about the nature of
the good, and about what constitutes a valid moral argument, frame how we reason about concrete ethical problems. Both deontology
and consequentialism are meta-ethical positions, operationalised, for example, in the differing arguments of Charles Beitz and Peter
Singer on global distributive justice. 13 Most scholars would acknowledge the background, structuring role that metatheory
plays, but argue
that we can take our metatheoretical assumptions off the shelf, get on with the serious
business of research and leave explicit metatheoretical reflection and debate to the philosophers. If practical
relevance is one of our concerns , however, there are several reasons why this is misguided . Firstly,
whether IR is practically relevant depends, in large measure, on the kinds of questions that animate
our research . I am not referring here to the commonly held notion that we should be addressing questions that practitioners
want answered. Indeed, our
work will at times be most relevant when we pursue questions that
policymakers and others would prefer left buried . My point is a different one, which I return to in greater
detail below. It is sufficient to note here that being
practically relevant involves asking questions of
practice ; not just retrospective questions about past practices – their nature, sources and consequences – but
practically relevant means
asking questions of how we, ourselves, or some other actors (states, policymakers, citizens, NGOs, IOs, etc.) should act.
14 Yet our ability, nay willingness, to ask such questions is determined by the metatheoretical
assumptions that structure our research and arguments. This is partly an issue of ontology – what we see
affects how we understand the conditions of action, rendering some practices possible or impossible, mandatory or
beyond the pale. If, for example, we think that political change is driven by material forces , then we
prospective questions about what human agents should do. As I have argued elsewhere, being
are unlikely to see communicative practices
of argument and persuasion
as potentially successful
sources of change . More than this, though, it is also an issue of epistemology. If we assume that the proper
domain of IR as a social science is the acquisition of empirically verifiable knowledge, then we
will struggle to comprehend, let alone answer, normative questions of how we should act. We will either
reduce ‘ought’ questions to ‘is’ questions, or place them off the agenda altogether. 15 Our metatheoretical assumptions
thus determine the macro-orientation of IR towards questions of practice, directly affecting the
field’s practical relevance . Secondly, metatheoretical revolutions license new second-order theoretical and
analytical possibilities
while foreclosing others, directly affecting those forms of scholarship
widely considered most practically relevant . The rise of analytical eclecticism illustrates this. As noted above,
Katzenstein and Sil’s call for a pragmatic approach to the study of world politics, one that addresses real-world problematics by
combining insights from diverse research traditions, resonates with the mood of much of the field, especially within the American
mainstream. Epistemological
and ontological debates are widely considered irresolvable dead
ends , grand theorising is unfashionable, and gladiatorial contests between rival paradigms appear, increasingly, as unimaginative
rituals. Boredom and fatigue are partly responsible for this new mood, but something deeper is at work. Twenty-five years ago, Sil and
Katzenstein’s call would have fallen on deaf ears; the neo-neo debate that preoccupied the American
mainstream occurred within a metatheoretical consensus, one that combined a neo-positivist epistemology with a
rationalist ontology. This singular metatheoretical framework defined the rules of the game ; analytical
eclecticism was unimaginable. The Third Debate of the 1980s and early 1990s destabilised all of this; not because American IR
scholars converted in their droves to critical theory or poststructuralism (far from it), but because metatheoretical absolutism became
less and less tenable. The anti-foundationalist critique of the idea that there is any single measure of truth did not produce a wave of
relativism, but it did generate a widespread sense that battles on the terrain of epistemology were unwinnable. Similarly, the Third
Debate emphasis on identity politics and cultural particularity, which later found expression in constructivism, did not vanquish
rationalism. It did, however, establish a more pluralistic, if nevertheless heated, debate about ontology, a terrain on which many
scholars felt more comfortable than that of epistemology. One can plausibly argue, therefore, that the metatheoretical
struggles of the Third Debate created a space for – even made possible – the rise of analytical eclecticism and
its aversion to metatheoretical absolutes, a principal benefit of which is said to be greater practical relevance. Lastly,
most of us would agree that for our research to be practically relevant, it has to be good – it has to be
the product of sound inquiry, and our conclusions have to be plausible. The pluralists among us would also agree that different
research questions require different methods of inquiry and strategies of argument. Yet across this diversity there are
several practices widely recognised as essential to good research . Among these are clarity of purpose,
logical coherence, engagement with alternative arguments and the provision of good reasons (empirical evidence, corroborating
arguments textual interpretations, etc.). Less often noted, however, is
the importance of metatheoretical
reflexivity . If our epistemological assumptions affect the questions we ask, then being
conscious of these assumptions is necessary to ensure that we are not fencing off questions
of importance , and that if we are, we can justify our choices. Likewise, if our ontological assumptions affect
how we see the social universe, determining what is in or outside our field of vision, then reflecting on these
assumptions can prevent us being blind to things that matter . A similar argument applies to our metaethical assumptions. Indeed, if deontology and consequentialism are both meta-ethical positions, as I suggested earlier, then
reflecting on our choice of one or other position is part and parcel of weighing rival ethical
arguments (on issues as diverse as global poverty and human rights). Finally, our epistemological, ontological and
meta-ethical assumptions are not metatheoretical silos; assumptions we make in one have a tendency
to shape those we make in another. The oft-heard refrain that ‘if we can’t measure it, it doesn’t matter’ is an unfortunate
example of epistemology supervening on ontology, something that metatheoretical reflexivity can help guard against. In sum, like
clarity, coherence, consideration of alternative arguments and the provision of good reasons,
metatheoretical reflexivity is part of keeping us honest, making it practically relevant
despite its
abstraction.
Turns case – failure to interrogate the assumption behind a
policy ensure problematic results and solutions that offer poor
side affects – that’s Ahmed
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development (IPRD), an
independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International
Relations, University of Sussex, , 2007, “STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE AS A FORM OF GENOCIDE THE IMPACT
OF THE INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER”, PDF, KENTUCKY
The Impact of Globalization IMF/World Bank stabilization and struc- tural adjustment programmes have consist- ently
advocated and implemented essen- tially the same package of pro-market policies throughout the world, designed fundamentally to allow debtor nations to per- petually service their ever-expanding debt. Essentially, these programmes
foster an in­ creased “outward orientation”, involving for example “devaluation, trade liberalization and incentives
for exporters” ­ policies that “are widely believed to lead to social hard- ships, increased inequality of
income distri- bution and increased poverty” (Singer, 1995). The focus of these policies, then, is not poverty
alleviation, but economic re- structuring conducive to the expansion and concentration of capital (see Appendix A).
Thus, the logic of
market economics tends towards a form of market imperialism, in which
key agential entities like the World Bank are cognizant of – but simultaneously indifferent
to - the devastating impact of their policies on victim populations (see Ap- pendix B). As former
US Federal Reserve Board economist Martin Wolfson observes, when the IMF loans funds to alleviate a growing
economic crisis – such as in Asia – the funds are intended to allow Asian bor- rowers to repay capital investors. Meanwhile, further IMF austerity measures such as continued deregulation and slow­growth policies are designed “restore
the ‘confid­ ence’ of investors and to make it again prof­ itable for them to return.” In other words, market
economics is consistently focused “on restoring the investments of the wealthy, not on helping
the people” (Wolf­ son, 1998). The people are simply irrelevant to the equation. Africa provides an
illuminating case-in- point. Naiman and Watkins (1999) heavily critique the impact of IMF interventions in
Africa based largely on the IMF’s own data. They document that less developed coun­ tries (LDCs) worldwide
participating in the IMF’s Enhanced Structural Adjustment Fa­ cility (ESAF) programmes have experienced
lower
economic growth, and even drastic declines in per capita income, compared to those outside these
programmes. Although increasing numbers of millions of Africans are suffering due to lack of
appropriate health, education and sanitary facilities, the IMF is forcing African countries to
further decrease public spending on such services, including a long-term decline in such spending between 1986 and 1996. External debt has also escalated exponentially. In sub- Saharan Africa, for
instance, debt rose as a share of GDP from 58% in 1988 to 70% in 1996. This has had tangibly devastating results for
the African population. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO, 1996), between 1985 and 1990,
under the policies of the global economic regime, the number of people living in poverty in
sub- Saharan Africa increased from 184 to 216 million.
By 1990, 204 million people suffered from malnutrition – a situation that is drastically worse off than
the previous 30 years. Indeed, the proportion of Africa’s population living on less than a dollar a day increased from approximately 18% in 1980 to 24% in 1995. The numbers living on less than a $1000 a year increased from 55% to 70% (Serioux, 1999). Data from the
World Health Organization shows that correspond- ing to the massive increase in impoverish- ment and indebtedness under the global economic regime, parts of sub-Saharan Africa now have adult mortality rates that are higher than 30 years ago. In Botswana, Lesotho,
Swaziland and Zimbabwe, for in- stance, life expectancy for men and women has reduced by 20 years. In Africa, 40 per- cent of deaths occur within the age range of below five years. Of the 10 million children who die worldwide unnecessarily every year, half occur in
Africa. Of the 20 coun- tries with the highest child mortality rates, 19 are in Africa. Of the16 countries with higher mortality rates than in 1990, 14 are in Africa. Of the 9 countries whose child mortality rate is higher than those recorded over 20 years ago, 8 are in
Africa. The vast majority of these deaths were not only fore- seeable; they were entirely preventable, res- ulting largely from malnutrition, diarrhoea, malaria and infections of the lower respirat- ory tract. Simple investments in clean wa- ter, improved sanitation and
basic precau- tionary health care such as insecticide- treated nets and more effective malarial drugs made available to the population could easily prevent much of these deaths (WHO, 2004). Now over 1 million children die annually —3,000 every day— of mal- aria,
simply due to lack of access to appro- priate medication (WHO/UNICEF, 2003). While these mortality rates have steadily increased over decades, the global economic regime has continued to conduct the same fundamental pattern of market-oriented policies designed
to cut spending on health care and sanitation ultimately in the interest of transnational capital. But the example of Africa is not isolated. On the contrary, it is representative of a decades-long pattern of Southern death-by-deprivation generated systematically by the
global economic re- gime (Nef, 1997). Conclusions Globalization as promoted by powerful bearers of capital, including Western gov- ernments, banks and transnational corpora- tions, is clearly of benefit to those who have already accumulated considerable amounts of
capital, or who otherwise retain profes- sional skills that can be sold or traded on the market. The poor, lacking both capital and the necessary professional skills, are in- creasingly marginalized, disempowered and periphalized in both developed and less de- veloped
countries, not only between the North and South, but even within both Northern and Southern countries. The inter- national economic order is thus systematic- ally shifting resources and power in favour of predominantly Northern transnational capital, at the expense of
the predominantly Southern multi-national poor. Given the consistency with which these policies have produced the same pattern of mounting death-by-deprivation, and given the extent to which this pattern has been thoroughly publicly documented by numer- ous
official government and inter-govern- mental agencies (including the IMF and the World Bank themselves), it is impossible to credibly claim that the key actors in the global economic regime are not cognizant of the impact of their policies (Kim, 2000; Chossudovsky,
. Even if it may be quite unfounded, if not patently absurd, to assert that transnational death-by-depriva- tion
constitutes the outcome of a conscious plan to exterminate millions of people loc- ated in African, Asian and other
Southern nations peripheral to the world capitalist economy, it is similarly absurd to suggest that the principal agential
entities – North- ern governments, institutions, and corpora- tions – responsible for erecting and pre- serving
2003)
the fundamental architecture of the global economic regime, are completely ig- norant of the
structural violence produced by globalization. As with the global process of environmental
degradation, intent with regards to the systematic rise of Southern death-by-deprivation by now
can be said to have formed, on the part of these key Northern governmental, institutional and
corporate actors. Indeed, the vast bulk of the policies of the global economic regime are underpinned by neo-Malthusian principles de- rived from the logic of neo-liberalism (Nair and Kirbat,
2004). Former editor of Popula- tion and Environment Virginia Abernethy (1991: 323, 326), for
example, defends the “legitimacy of unevenly distributed wealth,” on the basis of conserving
scarce resources and protecting the “legitimacy of owner­ ship.” Her emphasis on
over-population as the most prominent destructive force in LDCs is also representative of a general ideological
trend in much developmental discourse. Similarly, Nobel Prize-winning economist Arthur Lewis argued that since the
key to growth is capital accumulation, inequality was good for development and growth, because the
rich save more than the poor. Simon Kuznets, another Nobel Prize winner, saw inequality as an inevitable
byproduct of the initial stages of develop- ment, but believed that later this trend would reverse (Kuznets cited in
Stiglitz, 2002: 79). These highly influential perspect- ives propose that the generation of inequal- ity
– structural violence – is an inevitable and legitimate dimension of a desirable and successful
market-oriented economic policy. Neo-liberal ideology therefore sees violence and progress as
two sides of the same coin. As to the target groups of these destruct- ive economic policies, they clearly consist
of a multiplicity of national groups that are peripheral to the world economy, and as such are functionally subordinate
to the in- terests of transnational capital. Con- sequently, the well-being and even survival of these
national groups is considered ulti- mately irrelevant to the protection and pro- mulgation of those
interests. But more spe- cifically, although these national groups are generally targeted, the specific victims of global
structural violence are largely the most impoverished classes within these na- tional groups, classes that entirely lack
the ability to access or connect to the market.
Thus, the intrinsic logic of market econom- ics
categorizes the class of multi-national poor – largely members of Southern nation- al
groups – as irrelevant, indeed, as dispos- able relative to the more significant in- terests of
transnational capital, to which the former are subordinated. Heggenhougen (1996)
describes this as “functional apartheid”, a process of structur- al “discrimination against
or the so-called ‘setting apart’ of ‘disposable people.’” This sense of ‘disposability’ applies
largely to the populations of LDCs, whose primary func- tion is to serve as “open economic
territories and ‘reserves’ of cheap labour and natural resources” for the North, whose role
and po- sition in the global economy is defined by its “unequal structure of trade,
production and credit” (Chossudovsky, 1991: 2527). In­ deed, the term “unpeople” was originally coined by
historian and development spe­ cialist Mark Curtis (cited in Pilger, 1998: 55) to describe “ those whose
lives
have been deemed expendable, worthless, in the pursuit of foreign policy objectives”,
includ- ing the imperial imperatives underlying the market-orientated economic order. Unpeople are therefore “human beings who impede the pursuit of high policy and whose
rights, often lives, therefore become irrelev- ant” (Curtis, 2004). The concept of “un­
people” is thus intrinsic to the logic of glob- alization which concentrates capital in few- er
and fewer hands while marginalizing in- creasing numbers of people in LDCs, in the
pursuit of lofty market values (Opotow, 1995). This is, moreover, an arguably genocidal logic,
rooted in an ultimately genocidal in- tent. The key actors in pivotal positions of power within the global
economic regime are cognizant of the devastating impact of globalization on the world’s multi­national poor. Hence,
they can no longer be absolved of responsibility by reckless but intentional indifference toward this global structural violence that generates mass deaths-by- deprivation of millions of people across the globe. Returning to the
example of Africa, although millions of African children die an- nually due to a variety of
preventable dis- eases —a fact that is well-documented and known to the key actors in the global
eco- nomic regime— rather than endorsing in- creases in public spending on urgent health and
sanitation requirements, the global eco- nomic regime enforces the very opposite, thus
deliberately depriving these children of the facilities and medication necessary to prevent and/or
cure the savage conditions of life that lead to such swift and high mor- tality rates . In doing so,
the global economic regime is obviously not only complicit in, but principally responsible
for, these deaths, by perpetuating – indeed worsening – the artificial structural constraints
that exacer- bate the incidence of mass deaths. Moreover, such policies of the global eco- nomic regime
are clearly targeted princip- ally against multiple peripheral national groups in the South, and specifically against the
poorest classes of those groups. The key agents of the global economic regime are by now fully aware that an
inevitable con- sequence of their market-oriented policies is the periphalization and eventual death of such unpeople.
Thus, these key actors in the global eco- nomic regime have demonstrated implicit intent to destroy in part multiple
national and lower class groups of the ‘Third World’ in the pursuit of capital accumulation, by deliberately creating and
perpetuating condi- tions of life that will bring about their partial physical destruction. This is therefore a form of
global structural violence with distinctly genocidal features, bearing strong parallels with
previous cases of genocidal structural violence such as colonization and collectiv- ization. It
therefore seems justifiable to see the impact of the international economic or- der as not merely a
case of structural viol- ence, but more specifically a form of struc- tural genocide. At the very
least, it must be seen as possessing markedly genocidal or quasi-genocidal characteristics.
2NC – Alternative Solves
The alternative does solve – our approach is multiviarble and
re-orients our understanding of geopolitics via critical security
studies – rejecting the affirmative’s static notions of IR solves –
its try or die – the alternative is feasible and solves the aff
Lal 08 (Prerna P., J.D. Candidate at George Washington Law School, Critical Security Studies, “Deconstructing the
National Security State: Towards a New Framework of Analysis,” POSC 4910: Senior Seminar,
http://prernalal.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/css-deconstructing-the-nat-sec-state.pdf) KENTUCKY
Four years later, amidst the deaths of countless many civilians, a soaring budget deficit, numerous accounts of human rights violations, and the continued rise of “terrorist” networks in many more countries, the “war on terror” is steadily losing support, yet the leaders of the United States continue to carpet bomb Middle-Eastern nations with no end in sight. Hence, it has become critically important to question and reassess the dominant articulation of security as presented by the national security state. This dominant articulation is
realism, which has imposed an image of reality upon people that is unrealistic; an image that has been composed and constantly reconsidered, acting as a tool for statist identity construction and economic elites. For the purpose of this paper, all mentions of realism from hereon refers to neo-realism, which is an ideology that presupposes the existence of objective truth and assumes that political conflict and war is a result of the anarchic nature of the international system, where nation-states have to constantly fight to defend their
In an increasingly complex world, filled with a multitude of different cultures, languages,
states and peoples, the traditional neo- realist view of national security is problematic. The problems
boundaries.
with realism are many, starting with the fact that (neo)-realism is a misnomer for it is unrealistic and fails to grasp how
the world really works. In fact, it is a problem veiled as a problem-solver, wearing the false cloak of
objectivity and truth. It assumes that objective truth and knowledge exists independent of our
minds; however, the world is not free from our perceptions. As Anais Nin (2005, 5) points out in Critical
Security Studies and World Politics, “we do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.” In this case, the “we”
are the rulers of the American nation-state, who tout realism as objective truth, in order to create a world more
favorable to them. Those with an ideology of domination and an economic interest to dictate, define our reality in terms
of their interests. In fact, the construction of this reality is so pervasive that we do not see realism as
an ideology, but as a self-evident truth. To accept this constructed reality without questioning is
dangerous, for all ideology serves a purpose, and in this case, neo- realism serves the purpose of
the state and its elites. Realism also has a narrow and statist agenda that fails to cope with the actual threats to
human society. Kenneth Booth (2005, 7), a self-proclaimed fallen realist and head of the Department of International
Relations at University of Wales, argues in Critical Security Studies and World Politics that realism offers a massive
but narrow agenda, which is “based on the perceived interests of states (and therefore of their elites); this so-called
national interest is concerned with maximizing state security, maximizing economic well-being, and protecting the
state’s way of life.” Moreover, judging by the high levels of human insecurity that still exists in this
world, it is safe to say that realism is a failure for it has empirically failed to deliver security. The
threats to human security, which include war, disease, famines, crime, ethnic and religious
persecution, violence against women, environmental degradation and so on, take a back-seat
because realist notions of security are state-centric. This exclusive lens of international relations
is downright regressive for it silences dissidents and minority populations. Women, racial and
ethnic minorities, progressives, the working class and their concerns are absent from the realist
security agenda. Consequently, an alternative view that questions the dominant paradigm of
realism and realist notions of security is desperately needed to provide for human security
and emancipation . Methodology: Critical Security Studies The Critical Security Studies (CSS) approach to
international relations challenges realism and performatively proves that security is a paradoxical,
epistemologically flawed and ontologically unstable concept
Thus, Critical Security Studies is an unorthodox and questioning outlook to the
dominant social and power structure, institutions, and ideologies. Another component of critical theory
with no fixed definition. A branch of critical theory, CSS is a broad and diverse field with theorists ranging from critical realists to poststructuralists. However, it is united in its criticism of the neo-realist
framework of security, which shall be presented later. Perhaps, Robert Cox (1981, 208) comes closest to discerning the difference between the “realist” problem-solving approach to international relations and critical theory in “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,” when he states that the former takes “prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organized...as the given framework of action,” while the latter “calls them into question by concerning itself
with their origins and how and whether they might be in the process of changing.”
that differs from realism is that critical theory recognizes “change, the openness of history, and the unfinished nature of
the human experiment” (Booth 2005, 12). Therefore, while Critical Security Studies questions prevailing
structures and attitudes, it is less concerned with alternatives and more concerned with a deeper
understanding of security. Some may reject critical theory for advancing an unsatisfying and
incomplete methodology that may not be workable and policy-oriented. However, rejection
and rethinking is the first step towards any structural changes. There is no point in
advancing a completely alternative framework of security without first changing mindsets
by questioning the very nature of security . Furthermore, the very exercise of criticism
presents us with a more realistic picture of the world than the present ideology of security
as presented by the state (and its elites) .
Even CSS theorists differ on how to construct alternative models of security, in order to provide for the ultimate goal of the CSS project: human emancipation. CSS scholars are divided into two distinct categories: wideners and deepeners. While wideners claim that the greatest threat to state survival
is not military-based, but economic, social and environmental, deepeners focus on the question of whose security is threatened and whether the security project is better achieved with an individual or society-centered referent rather than the state (Krause 1996, 230). The two categories are not mutually-exclusive, and this paper will advance a concept of security that both widens and deepens the field of security studies. At the same time, it is impossible to achieve the end goal of human emancipation without questioning the existing
oppressive power structures and institutions; hence, this paper will also take a poststructuralist outlook to the question of security and deconstruct the concept of the national security state, in addition to the flawed neo-realist notion of security. The [National] Security Dilemma Under the lens of critical theory, there are many problems with the current framework of national security. First, security is a paradox for the more we add to the national security agenda, the more we have to fear. As Barry Buzan (1991, 37) points out in People,
States and Fear, the security paradox presents us with a cruel irony in that to be secure ultimately, would mean “being unable to escape.” Thus, to secure oneself, one would need to be trapped in a timeless state, for leaving this state would incur risks. The current neo-realist realization of national security is quite narrow and does not take into account threats to human welfare, health, social problems, and domestic sources of insecurity. However, in Security: A New Framework of Analysis, several CSS theorists put forward the case for
widening the field of security studies and separating these into five different sectors under state control: military, politics, environment, society and economy (Buzan, De Wilde and Waever 1998, 21-23). But, since these wideners leave the referent object of security as the state, widening the field of security studies becomes even more troubling because it risks more state control over our lives, the militarization of social issues such as drugs and crime, which would further legitimize and justify state violence, leaving us all the more
insecure.
Accordingly, it becomes clear that
a mere re- definition of “security” away from its current neo-
realist framework does not solve the security dilemma if the referent object of security is
left unchanged . This goes to prove that it is the state as the referent object that requires
questioning in terms of its supposed provision of security rather than the problems with widening
the field of security. Without a state-centric concept of security, there would be no national
security agenda left to widen, as our security concerns would be human-centered, hence, the
paradox of security would dissipate. A second part of the security paradox is that security and
insecurity are not binary opposites. On a micro-level, if security is the state of being secure, than insecurity
should be the state of not being secure. However, what we do feel secure about is neither part of the national security
agenda nor a conscious thought or feeling. The state of being secure is thus, not conceptualized as an absence of
insecurity. On a policymaking level, Robert Lipschutz (1995, 27), Associate Professor of Politics at University of
California, Santa Cruz, notes in On Security that our desire to achieve security through the acquisition of
arms and a national missile “defense” system, serves to insecure those whom we label and treat as
threats. This encourages the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and offensive
posturing by those we wish to secure ourselves against, causing us to feel more insecure as
the end result of our search for security . More recently, when George W. Bush included North Korea in
his illogical “Axis of Evil” and named it as a threat to the United States, the peripheral state had no nuclear capability
and would never have thought to use the threat of weapons of mass destruction to blackmail Western powers into
giving aid. However, alarmed at the thought of being the next Afghanistan or Iraq, North Korea retaliated within a year
by revealing its nuclear arsenal. The United States watched helplessly as one more previously benign nation became a
real security problem. As a consequence, imagined enemies become real threats due to the ongoing threat construction
by the state, and this poses the security dilemma of creating self-fulfilling prophecies in the current framework of
security. Our notion of security is what the state says it is, rather than what we feel it is. Yet, this entrenched view
of security is epistemologically flawed, which is our second dilemma; meaning that our knowledge of
security as it is defined is based in certain realist assumptions that do not hold up under scrutiny .
Our perception of what and from whom we need to be secured is not based on the actual
threats that exist, but on the threats that we are told to perceive by the state . Thus, terrorists,
drugs, illegal immigrants, “Third World” dictators, rogue states, blacks, non-Christians, and the Other, are considered
as threats to the national security apparatus, and consequently, as threats to the individual American.
This state
construction of threats pervades our minds, causing a trickle-down effect that encourages a
culture of fear, where the only limit to the coming danger is our imagination.
Lipschutz (2000, 44-45) concludes in After Authority: War, Peace, and Global
Politics in the 21st Century, “the national security state is brought down to the level of the household, and each one arms itself against the security dilemma posed by its neighbor across the hedge of fence.” Lipschutz seems to be saying that it is national security that eventually encourages the creation of a dichotomy between the self and the Other in our everyday lives. Indeed, it is the discourse of security by the rulers and elites, which creates and sustains our bipolar mindset of the world. A final dilemma presented by the current
security framework is that security is ontologically unstable, unable to exist on its own, requiring the creation of certain conditions and categories, specifically, the creation of the Other. James Der Derian (1995, 25), Associate Professor of Political Science at U Mass (Amherst), notes in On Security that we are taught to consider security as “an a priori argument that proves the existence and necessity of only one form of security because there currently happens to be a widespread belief in it.” Yet, national security is a highly unstable
concept and changes over time, with the construction of new threats and enemies. Due to its unstable nature, security can then, be considered as a constant fluid that is constructed and re- defined by the discourse of the state and security elites. Ole Waever, a senior researcher at the Center for Peace and Conflict Research, contends that the very act of uttering “security” places it on the security agenda, thereby giving the state and its elite, power over the issue. In On Security, he notes that “in naming a certain development a security
problem, the state can claim a special right, one that in the final instance, always be defined by the state and its elites” (1995, 55).
This process is termed as “securitization,” which simply means treating an event or issue as a problem of national security rather than first questioning whether it should even be treated as a security issue. Such an act serves the interests of the state and its elites, starting with security discourse by the state, which constructs and perpetuates state identity and existence
.
Purpose(s) of Securitization: (1)
Identity Construction and the Preservation of the State Identity is not a stable and stationary concept; it is constantly redefined and reconstructed to meet new challenges and adapt to new events. It would be easier to draw a parallel between gender identity and state identity to exemplify this concept. Contrary to mainstream thought, gender identity is socially constructed and keeps changing throughout our lives. Comparably, the identity of the state is also in a constant state of flux. The state and its elites are involved in identity work
when they place or take things off the national security agenda. And similarly to gender identity, which requires the presence of difference (masculine and feminine) in order for gender to have any meaning, the state requires the existence of the Other to build an identity for the self. This identity is a performative constitution, taking the shape of security discourse, and thus, the “constitution of identity is achieved through the inscription of boundaries that serve to demarcate an ‘inside’ from and ‘outside,’ a ‘self’ from an ‘other,’ a
‘domestic’ from a ‘foreign’ (Campbell 1998, 9). The state moves to eliminate the Other and claim sovereignty over the outside and the foreign. In doing so, the state gains power and control over foreign policy, and international relations becomes a field concerned with building boundaries instead of bridges. However, since the identity of the state is fluid, boundaries do change over time though the performative constitution of state identity, which occurs through security discourse. This positional identity construction will be examined
in terms of the Cold War and Post-Cold War era, but it is important to note that the discourse of fear and danger, in order to construct state identity, is not new to the modern nation-state. David Campbell (1998, 49), Professor of International Politics at University of Newcastle in England, suggests in Writing Security that the discourse of danger by the state is as old as Christendom for “thinking that Western civilization was besieged by a horde of enemies (Turks, Jews, heretics, witches), the church saw the devil everywhere and
After the fall of Christendom, danger has become the new God
of Western civilization, and according to Campbell (1998, 48 ), the discourse of threat construction provides
encouraged guilt to such an extent that a culture of anxiety ensured.” Today, Turks, Jews, heretics and witches have simply been replaced with rogue nations, “Arab terrorists,” communists, and “Third World” dictators through security discourse.
a “new theology of truth...about who and what we are by highlighting who or what ‘we’ are not,
and what ‘we’ have to fear.” This demonstrates the inherent unstable nature of security as defined
by the national security state, and the never-ending construction of identity through the
otherization of difference. Instead of celebrating our different identities and bridging the gaps
present in international relations, the national security state has drawn boundaries by constructing
an identity in opposition to the Other. The Cold War serves as the classic example of statist
identity construction through the creation of the Other, which created more insecurity than
security for the entire world.
After the fall of Hitler and the Axis powers, the United States emerged as a superpower, along with the Soviet Union, which had been a key ally in the war. Due to the neo-realist obsession with an ordered world operating under the assumption that states exist in an anarchic system, the United States formulated an identity of the self that was opposed to disorder and incivility.
Out of the Cold War discourse of the Other came the national security state, which was defined by the National Security Act of 1947 (Der Derian 1992, 76), a measure that Truman regretted signing by the time he left office. This national security state found an enemy in the Soviet Union, and created the Other in order to stabilize the self and guarantee its existence. In NSC-68, the United States admitted that even without the threat of Soviet communism, it would still pursue policies designed to shape the world in a more orderly
manner (Campbell 1998, 30-31), probably referring to a more capitalist economic order. The Cold War that ensued between the two superpowers became coded as a struggle between good and evil, civilized and barbaric, freedom-loving and totalitarian. Suddenly, the threat of communism was equated to the ruthless and fascist Nazi regime, and communism was “un-American,” as demonstrated by the oppressive activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The search for national security created insecurity for
a large number of Americans who were labeled as communists and Soviet-sympathizers, blacklisted and lost their jobs. The identity construction by the American statecraft in opposition to Soviet communism did serve the interests of the elite. Issues such as employment, childcare, women’s rights, universal healthcare, and equal wages were characterized as evil and foreign by being associated with communism and the Soviet Union (Campbell 1998, 140). These domestic issues caused vast human insecurity in the United States, and
the Cold War search for security caused insecurity throughout the entire world. It is important to note that the Soviet Union was never a military threat to the United States. This is not to say that the USSR lacked military capability, but that its ability to cause severe damage to the United States was not recognized (and encouraged) until it was construed as the Other. To secure the self from the threat of the Other, the two superpowers engaged in a massive arms buildup, which almost resulted in nuclear annihilation during the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Furthermore, they fought proxy wars in underdeveloped countries, destroying millions of lives and infrastructure. The end result of this face-off was a vast amount of human insecurity, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and our existing bipolar mindset of the world. Even today, what constitutes of American is unclear; however, what unites Americans is the threat of what is defined as “un-American” by the national security apparatus. In the Post-September 11 era, identity construction by the American
state in terms of us vs. them discourse continues to pervade our consciousness. The threat of a nuclear winter never did materialize, but it seems to have deep frozen the minds of our policymakers, and no amount of thawing makes any difference. George W. Bush is so infected with the “Cold War of the mind” that he keeps coughing up redundant phrases like “they hate freedom,” and “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists," which usually happens every time he stumbles and cannot find anything else in his frozen brain. In
a press release after the ‘terrorist’ attack in Bali, Bush stated that “those of us who love freedom must work together to do everything we can to disrupt, deny and bring to justice these people who have no soul, no conscience, people that hate freedom” (U.S. Department of State 2002, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs). Who in their right mind hates freedom?! Then, in his State of the Union address this year, Bush maintained that “the United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on
anyone else. That is one of the main differences between us and our enemies” (U.S. Department of State 2005, Democracy). In all of these cases, the enemy is ill-defined and unknown, simply functioning as an opposition against whom the American state can construct an identity. Additionally, the enemy or the Other is outside the border, and not within, as is represented by “we have to face terrorists abroad so we do not have to fight them here at home.” It is preposterous to think that Americans cannot be terrorists or engage in
terrorism, and yet the state ensures us that “we” are peace- loving, free and civil while “they” are constructed as uncivilized, soulless, inhumane, barbaric and oppressive. While functioning as identity construction for the state, this discourse of security also legitimizes state violence in favor of elitist interests. (2) National Security is an Elite Tool National security serves as a function of elite security rather than human security. We have already discussed Waever’s theory on how elites securitize an event or issue through speech acts, and
as a result, gain power and resources over an issue. This (national security) speech act also works to create insecurity for the human population. The apartheid regime in South Africa is a classic example of how national security is structured around elite security, while making the majority of the South African population and neighboring nations feel insecure. During the Cold War, national security for the apartheid regime was tied to a portrayal of South Africa as a threatened and unstable state, requiring the constant support of Western
powers (Booth and Vale 1997, 335), including the acquisition of nuclear arms from the United States. The black liberation movement in South Africa was characterized as Communist, although the only “ideology” that the movement adhered to was human rights and freedom. The minority white elites simply used the fear of communism to build up a military state and wage war against the majority African population, who were excluded from power. The neighboring states saw South Africa as an all too powerful state with offensive
posturing, and thus the security of the apartheid regime translated into insecurity for the surrounding states and the majority of the South African population. In the United States, the securitization of energy policy and the subsequent occupation of Middle East countries has served elite interests while making us all the more insecure. The invasion and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan demonstrates how the national security state works for the economic gain and security of power elites. There was no humane reason to go to war
with Afghanistan, but post 9-11, the national security state build up the case for invading and colonizing the country. Not even a single terrorist involved in the September 11 attacks was from Afghanistan. In fact, the United States had helped to prop up the Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden by training and giving them arms in the 1970s to fight against the USSR. In doing so, the United States placed an authoritarian government in power, which was bad news for most Afghans, and especially women. In the weeks leading up to the
war, we heard a lot of PR from the White House on the inhumane treatment of women in Afghanistan, including how women were “banned from working, flogged for wearing makeup, even executed for invented sins” (Flanders 2001, 36). Here is another case in point of positional identity construction by the national security state: we uphold women’s rights everywhere and they oppress their own women; it is what they do. The images of helpless and needy women in burkhas and hijabs required that the chauvinistic and patriarchal,
(in addition to ethnocentric), security state liberate them from the oppressive conditions. Almost overnight, the anti-abortion and anti-sexual rights George Bush becomes a feminist and makes the case for war by touting the oppression of women by the Taliban. In this case, the outright lie helps in winning overwhelming support for a war that is really being waged for ulterior elitist motives. The war against Afghanistan had everything to do with Big Oil and America’s geopolitical interest in dominating the oil-rich regions of Central
Asia and the Middle- East, having very little to do with any security threat posed by the Taliban or Saddam Hussein. Thus, along with Afghanistan, President Bush had a massive number of troops deployed in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia within a few weeks of 9-11, all of which have rich oil reserves worth up to an estimated $4 trillion (Klevemen 2004, 11). This made oil companies such as Unocal happy as they had been fruitlessly trying for years to reach an agreement with the Taliban on building an oil pipeline through
Afghanistan. Then, within the first few months of overthrowing the Taliban, President Karzai of Afghanistan, a former Unocal advisor, agreed to the long-planned building of a $3.2 billion oil pipeline running from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan, all the way into the Indian Ocean (Klevemen 2004, 11). Therefore, while Americans are still paying almost $3 at the pump and the number of American soldiers dead is increasing steadily, Big Oil is getting ready to make billions at the expense of human security. The “war against terror”
has created massive insecurity for people in the Middle- East and all parts of the world. Al Qaeda networks have proliferated to dozens more countries. While people and soldiers in the thousands are losing their lives in this supposed “war on terror,” millions in the United States are terrorized by the expansion of the national security state. The Bill of Rights has become a victim of state terrorism, as the American statecraft locks up people for an indefinite period without due process of law. The state has been given the green light to
perform strip-searches at our ports of entry, and here, race has become a proxy for criminality. Suppression of information and academic freedom, in addition to unauthorized wiretaps has become the law of the land. One would think that the insecurity caused to the American people and to the state apparatus through the blowbacks of hegemony, characterized by 9-11, would de- legitimize the state. Paradoxically, it is the creation of insecurity that stabilizes the state and guarantees its existence. Here, we find the greatest paradox of the
state as the provider of security. The tate has always been considered as the primary provider of security and this has been the basis of its existence. However, if the state succeeds in achieving security, it would cease to exist. Hence, Campbell (1998; 13) concludes that “the constant articulation of danger through foreign policy is thus not a threat to a state’s identity or existence: it is its condition of possibility.” Instead of hurting the state or its legitimacy as we might think by default, actual threats and the discourse of danger from the
outside help to propel the state and safeguard its existence. Thus, paradoxically, insecurity secures the state! September 11 serves as the perfect example of a state that was struck with a terrible atrocity from outside, and yet, instead of disintegrating, the state gained more power and control over our lives. Indeed, the leader of the most powerful nation of the world would never have won re-election (or rather, be elected for the first time) without the help of this catastrophic event. However, while the state is being secured, it is human
security that is sacrificed. In the final analysis then, since national security is diametrically opposed to human security, the state must be dislodged as the primary referent object of security. Deconstructing the [National Security] State Throughout this paper, we have seen cases of how national security is an antonym for human security. With this essential realization, Booth (2005, 33) gives three reasons for why the state should not be the referent object of security: “states are unreliable as primary referents because while some are in the
business of security some are not; even those which are producers of security represent the mans and not the ends; and states are too diverse in their character to serve as the basis for a comprehensive theory of security.” Additionally, the cases of South Africa and Afghanistan prove how the national ecurity state is merely an elite tool, which causes human insecurity at home and abroad. The state treats security as a problem that comes from the outside, rather than as a problem that can arise from domestic issues. The end result of statecentric security is that humans are alienated from discussions about their own security and welfare. The most compelling reason is provided by Hayward Akler (2005, 191) in Critical Security Studies and World Politics, in which he states that “economic collapse, political oppression, scarcity, overpopulation, ethnic rivalry, the destruction of nature, terrorism, crime and disease provide more serious threats to the well-being of individuals and the interest of nations.” Thus, to millions of people, it is not the existence of the Other across
Critical theory does not offer simple one-shot solutions to the
give simple answers would be a
performative contradiction, especially after criticizing realism for being intellectually rigid for
believing in objective truth. In other words , there are no alternatives; just alternative modes of
the border that poses a security problem, but their own state that is a threat to security. The question that arises next is how to put critical theory into practice and deconstruct the national security state.
problems created by the neo-realist state and elitist conception of security. To
understanding. However , using the poststructuralist Foucaultian analysis that discourse is power, we can
move towards deconstructing the power of the state and elites to securitize using their own
tool: discourse. The elites who control the meaning of security and define it in terms that are
appropriate to their interests hold tremendous power in the national security state. As Foucault
astutely observed, “the exercise of power is always deeply entwined with the production of
knowledge and discourse” (Dalby 1998, 4). For too long, language has been used against us to
create our reality, thereby obfuscating our lens of the world, depriving us from an objective
search for truth and knowledge. The history of colonized people shows how the construction of language
defined and justified their oppressed status. In a way, we are colonized through discursive practices and subjected to the
reality that the state wants us to see. However, definitions belong to the definer, and it is high time that we questioned
and defined our own reality. Thus, citizen action is critical to questioning and deconstructing the
national security state and taking away its power to define our security. In On Security, Pearl Alice
Marsh (1995, 126) advances the idea of a grassroots statecraft that is defined as “challenging foreign
policy of government through contending discursive and speech acts.” This calls for pitting the values
of civil society against the state establishment and challenging the American statecraft’s freedom to cast issues and
events in a security or militarized framework. The United States has not always been a national security
state and neither does it have to maintain that hegemonic and oppressive status in order to exist. It
is critical to remember that fundamental changes in our institutions and structures of power do not
occur from the top; they originate from the bottom. History is case in point. Citizen action was
critical to ending the Red Scare and the Vietnam War, as the American people realized the ludicrousness of
framing Vietnam as a security issue, which led to the fall of the Second New Deal, the deaths of thousands of American
soldiers and a financial cost that we are still shouldering. In the end, what they need to be secured from and how, is a
question best left up to individual Americans and subsequently, civil society. Thus, grassroots citizen action
performatively makes individuals the referent subject of security as people would call for the
demilitarization and desecuritization of issues that are contrary and irrelevant to human security.
There is hope for the future and practical application of critical theory in international
relations . As Robert Lipschutz (2000, 61) concludes in After Authority: War, Peace, and Global Politics in the 21st
Century, “it was the existence of the Other across the border that gave national security its power and authority; it is the
disappearance of the border that has vanquished that power.” Britain, France and Germany set aside their historical
enmities and became part of a European community, which has formed a new collective identity and security across
borders. Cold War rivals that almost annihilated the world are now friends in the “war against terror.”
The
apartheid regime in South Africa did collapse eventually. In the past two years, India and Pakistan
have been moving towards a more peaceful future that also includes fighting the “war against terror” together. While
nation-states that were previously hostile to each other have united to be hostile towards other states, it is not overly
idealist to suggest that with each new friendship and alliance, there is one less foe and one less Other. The world is
not stable and stagnant, existing in an anarchic, nasty and brutish framework in which states have
to endlessly bargain for their self-interest, as realists would like us to believe. On the contrary,
international relations and the boundaries constructed by the state are subject to change and evertransitioning, which presents a compelling case for critical theory as a more realistic framework
through which we can view international relations. Therefore, our ultimate search for security
does not lie in securing the state from the threat of the enemy across the border, but in
removing the state as the referent object of security and moving towards human
emancipation.
Roland Bleiker, Associate Professor – University of Queensland, ‘1 (The Zen of International Relations, “Forget IR
Theory,” p. 37-9) KENTUCKY
Stories, so we are told by prevailing social science wisdom, are not part of international relations (IR) scholarship.
Stories belong to the realm of fiction, not the deomain of fact. And yet, stories freely whiz in and out of IR. Indeed, if
we look more carefully, IR appears as nothing but a set of narratives that provide us with meaning and coherence.
Consider how critical scholars increasingly portray the locus classicus of IR – the state, that is – not only as an
institution, but also, and primarily, as a series of stories. These stories, Michael Shapiro points out, are part of a
legitimization process that highlights, promotes and naturalises certain political practices and the territorial context
within which they take place. Taken together, these stories provide the state with a sense of identity, coherence and
unity. They create boundaries between an insider and an outside, between a people and its Others. But by virtue of what
they are and do, state-stories also exclude, for they seek “to repress or delegitimise other stories and practices of
identity and space they reflect.”3 Of course, the prevailing IR stories have not gone unchallenged. Since the early
1980s, IR has come under harsh criticism. We have heard not only of state-centrism, but also of masculine values,
structural determinism, ethnocentrism, positivism, and indeed, of the refusal to engage altogether in epistemological
debates.4 And yet, orthodox approaches to IR appear surprisingly resilient, or so at least they present
themselves. Many IR scholars who occupy key positions in the Western academy, particularly in North America,
unwaveringly pursue the same research agendas. They reaffirm the realist dilemmas that allegedly arise from the
anarchical character of the international system, contemplate the role of regimes and international institutions, or revisit
one more time the issue of absolute versus relative What accounts for this surprising resilience of
gains.5
entrenched IR stories? Are prevalent realist and liberal stories simply more convincing than
others? The power to tell stories is the power to define common sense. Prevalent IR stories have been
told for so long that they no longer appear as stories. They are accepted as fact, for their metaphorical dimensions have
vanished from our collective memories. We have become accustomed to our distorting IR metaphors until we come to
lie, as Nietzsche would say, ‘herd-like in a style obligatory for all’.6 As a result, dominant IR stories have
successfully transformed one specific interpretation of world political realities, the realist one,
into reality per se.7 Realist perceptions of the international have gradually become accepted as common sense, to
the point that any critique against them has to be evaluated in terms of an already existing and objectivised world view.
There are powerful mechanisms of control precisely in this ability to determine meaning and
rationality. ‘Defining common sense’,
‘is the ultimate act of political power.’8 It separates the
possible from the impossible and directs theory and practice of international relations on a particular path. The
prime objective of this essay is to challenge prevalent IR stories. The most effective way of doing so, the chapter
argues, is not to critique these stories, but to forget them, to tell new stories about world politics – stories that are not
constrained by the boundaries of established and objectified IR narratives. Such an approach diverges from many
critical engagements with world politics. Most challenges against dominant IR stories have been advanced in the form
of critiques. While critiquing orthodox IR stories remains an important task, it is not sufficient. Exploring the origin of
problems, in this case discourses of power politics and their positivist framing of political practice, cannot overcome all
the existing theoretical and practical dilemmas. By articulating critique in relation to
orthodox IR
Steve Smith argues,
the
arguments advanced by
theory,
the impact of critical voices remains confined within discursive boundaries
established
through the initial framing of debates. A successful challenge of orthodox IR stories must do
the larger
that have been
more than merely critique their narrow and problematic nature . To be effective, critique
must be supplemented with a process of forget the object of critique theorizing world politics beyond
the agendas,
preset by orthodox debates. Indeed, the most powerful potential of critical
ting
, of
issues and terminologies that are
scholarship may well lie in the attempt to tell different stories about IR, for once these
stories have become validated, they may well open up spaces for a more inclusive and less
violence-prone practice of world politics .
2NC – A2 - Permutation Do Plan and All NonCompetitive Parts
Doesn’t make sense – all the parts are competitive – the
alternative call’s out the 1AC as being poorly constructed and
rejecting the logic behind its construction
AND – its incoherent – no way to determine what is and is not
competitive in the abstract – reject the permutation for being
vague – it encourages sand bagging and lack of clear advocacy
undermining fairness and education
2NC – A2 – Perm Do Both
Mutually exclusive by definition –– differences in identify
present holes in their assumptions – whole sale recognition that
social constructs exits and can shape large scale behavior is
crucial – that’s Ahmed
Severs their reps and method – voting issue for fairness and
education – key to defending and debating the aff – avoids aff
conditionality
2NC – Permutation Card
Vote neg to refrain from the basic terms of reference – only
critique solves
Graeme Cheeseman, Snr. Lecturer @ New South Wales, and Robert Bruce, ‘96 (Discourses of Danger & Dread
Frontiers, p. 5-9)KENTUCKY
This goal is pursued in ways which are still unconventional in the intellectual milieu of
international relations
even though they are gaining influence worldwide as traditional modes
in Australia,
of theory and practice are rendered inadequate by global trends that defy comprehension,
let alone policy
the discourse, but accord no privileged place to its ‘knowledge form as
reality’ in debates on defence and security. Indeed
debate will be furthered only through
. The inability to give meaning to global changes reflects partly the enclosed, elitist world of professional security analysts and bureaucratic experts, where entry is gained by learning and accepting to speak a particular,
exclusionary language. The contributors to this book are familiar with
, they believe that
a long overdue critical re-evaluation of elite perspectives. Pluralistic, democratically-oriented
perspectives
are both required and essential if
thinking on
security is to be
invigorated not a conventional policy
offering policy-makers and their academic
counterparts sets of neat alternative solutions, in familiar language and format, to problems they
pose This expectation is in itself a considerable part of the problem to be analysed
questions how problems are framed by policy-makers. challenges the proposition that
irreducible bodies of real knowledge on defence and security exist independently of their ‘context
in the world’, and it demonstrates how security policy is articulated authoritatively by the elite
keepers of that knowledge, experts trained to recognize enduring, universal wisdom
If the critic
responds directly to the demand for policy alternatives, without addressing this image, he or she
(THEY ARE) is tacitly endorsing it Before engaging in the policy debate the critics need to
on Australia’s identity
Australia’s
. This is
defence and
book; nor should it be, in the sense of
.
. It is, however, a book about policy, one
that
I IT
. All others, from this perspective, must
accept such wisdom or remain outside the expert domain, tainted by their inability to comply with the ‘rightness’ of the official line. But it is precisely the official line, or at least its image of the world, that needs to be problematised.
.
reframe the basic terms of reference .
policy-maker’s frame of reference be accepted as the only basis for discussion and analysis
ignores
tradition commonly associated with Socrates and purportedly integral to the
Western tradition of democratic dialogue. More immediately, it ignores post-seventeenth century
democratic traditions which insist a good society must have within it some way of critically
assessing its knowledge and the decisions based upon that knowledge which impact upon citizens
of such a society This is a tradition
totalitarian enemy precisely because there were institutional checks and balances upon power
This book, then, reflects and underlines the importance of Antonio Gramsci and Edward Said’s ‘critical intellectuals’.15 The demand, tacit or otherwise, that
the
a three thousand year old
that
.
with a slightly different connotation in contemporary liberal democracies which, during the Cold War, were proclaimed different and superior to the
. In short,
one of the major differences between ‘open societies’ and their (closed) counterparts behind the Iron Curtain was that the former encouraged the critical testing of the knowledge and decisions of the powerful and assessing them against liberal democratic principl es. The
latter tolerated criticism only on rare and limited occasions. For some, this represented the triumph of rational-scientific methods of inquiry and techniques of falsification. For others, especially since positivism and rationalism have lost much of their allure, it meant that
for society to become open and liberal, sectors of the population must be independent of the state
and free to question its knowledge and power.
critical
dialogue is long overdue
security community continues to invoke
closed monological narratives on defence and security.
questions the distinctions between
policy practice and academic theory that inform conventional accounts of
security
theory is integral to the practice of security analysis and policy prescription
policy-makers, academics and students of defence and security to think critically about what
they are reading, writing and saying; to begin to ask, of their work and study, difficult and
searching questions raised in other disciplines; to recognise, no matter how uncomfortable it
feels, that what is involved in theory and practice is not the ability to identify a replacement for
failed models, but a realisation that terms and concepts – state sovereignty, balance of power,
security, and so on – are contested and problematic, and that the world is indeterminate, always
becoming what is written about it. Critical analysis which shows how particular kinds of
Though we do not expect this position to be accepted by every reader, contributors to this book believe that
in Australia and needs to be listened to. For all its liberal democratic trappings, Australia’s
This book also
Australian
particularly in chapters 1 and 2, is to illustrate how
also calls on
. One of its major concerns,
. The book
theoretical presumptions can effectively exclude vital areas of political life from analysis has
direct practical implications for policy-makers, academics and citizens who face the daunting task
of steering through some potentially choppy international waters over the next few years.
to give meaning to a world where so much that has long been taken for granted
now demands imaginative, incisive reappraisal
to find meaning, often despairing at
the terrible human costs of international violence
security
in particular
Cold War
security mindsets that are dressed up as new thinking
alternative ways of engaging in security
and defence practice.
seek to alert policy-makers, academics and students to
alternative theoretical possibilities which might better serve
community pursuing security
and prosperity in an uncertain world. All
confront the policy community and its counterparts
in the academy with a deep awareness of the intellectual and material constraints imposed by
dominant traditions of realism, but they avoid dismissive and exclusionary terms which often in
the past characterized exchanges between policy-makers and their critics.
attention
needs to be paid to the words and the thought processes of those being criticized
this kind
draws attention to underlying assumptions, showing they need to be recognized and questioned.
A sense of doubt (in place of confident certainty) is a necessary prelude to a genuine search
Australia
There is also
much of interest in the chapters for those struggling
. The contributors, too, have struggled
. This is why readers will find no single, fully formed panacea for the world’s ills in general, or Australia’s
. There are none. Every chapter, however, in its own way, offers something more than is found in orthodox literature, often by exposing ritualistic
defence and
. Chapters 7 and 9, for example, present
Others (chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8)
an Australian
chapters
This is because, as noted earlier,
. A close reading of
for alternative policies. First comes an awareness of the need for new perspectives, then
specific policies may follow.
we need to look not so much at contending
policies as they are made for us but at challenging ‘the discursive process which gives [favoured
interpretations of “reality”] their meaning and which direct
] policy/analytical/military
responses’. This process is not restricted to the small, official defence and security establishment
huddled around
These discursive processes
attempt to make sense of a
politics of exclusion and closure which exercises disciplinary power
They also
question the discourse of ‘regional security’, ‘security cooperation’, ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘alliance
politics’
This is seen as an important task especially when, as is
revealed, the disciplines of International Relations and Strategic Studies are under challenge from
critical and theoretical debates ranging across the social sciences and humanities; debates that are
nowhere to be found
public policies on defence and security are
informed, underpinned and legitimised by a narrowly-based intellectual enterprise which draws
strength from contested concepts of realism and liberalism, which in turn seek legitimacy through
policy-making processes.
policy-makers and their academic advisors are unaware of
broader intellectual debates , or resistant to them, or choose not to understand them, and why?
As Jim George argues in the following chapter,
[Australia’s
the US-Australian War Memorial in Canberra. It also encompasses much of Australia’s academic defence and security community located primarily though not exclusively within the Australian National University and the
University College of the University of New South Wales.
are examined in detail in subsequent chapters as authors
over Australia’s security community.
that are central to Australia’s official and academic security agenda in the 1990s.
in Australian defence and security studies. The chapters graphically illustrate how Australia’s
Contributors ask whether Australia’s
2NC – A2 – No Root Cause
We will concede their evidence that there is no root cause of
conflict – this proves the problem with orthodox IR it doesn’t
take into account the multiple variables that make conflict
possible – we critique the idea that the plan can solve the root
cause of conflict – only a constructivist multi variable
approach solves – this is neg offense – that’s Ahmed
2NC – A2 – Griwsold
Free trade causes conflict – Reject Griswold’s ideologically
loaded assertions—their evidence is hyperbolic they have an
incentive to create threats for the US to work against
Ian Fletcher is an Adjunct Fellow at the U.S. Business & Industry Council, a Washington-based think tank founded
in 1933, 2010, “The Great Trade Debate: Ian Fletcher - Reply to Dan Griswold on Free Trade”,
http://worldtradelaw.typepad.com/ielpblog/2010/03/the-great-trade-debate-ian-fletcher-reply-to-dan-griswold-on-freetrade.html, KENTUCKY
Dan’s cheery (if somewhat bubble-inflated)
statistics on the recent general prosperity of the U.S. are a
mere distraction here, as nothing about these figures indicates whether free trade worsened
or improved them. So I will not address them. Some of Dan’s analytically-relevant assertions, however,
are demonstrably false , like his claim that “trade has created better jobs for millions of Americans.” The reality
is that the U.S. economy has ceased generating net new jobs in internationally-traded sectors. All our job growth is now
in non-tradable sectors like waitresses and security guards. Dan repeatedly confuses the benefits of trade with the
benefits of free trade. Nobody on the protectionist side is proposing abolishing all trade, but we don’t need a trading
system without reasonable limits in order to gain from a bit of foreign competition. We rejected pure laissez faire in our
domestic economy a very long time ago; there’s no good reason to suppose it makes any more sense internationally. It
is no accident that the U.S. was historically a protectionist economy. The Founding Fathers understood the value of
protectionism, so they explicitly granted Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations” in Article I,
Section 8 of the Constitution. If protectionism is such a bad idea, why did the U.S. go from being an agricultural
backwater to the world’s industrial superpower under this policy? Why did Japan go from bombed-out rubble to the
second-richest nation in the world this way? Why is China growing nearly ten percent a year this way? Dan’s claim
that global poverty has declined due to free trade is bizarre given that, according to the World Bank,
the entire net reduction in global poverty since 1981 has been in protectionist China. Similarly
implausible is Dan’s assertion that free trade “promotes… the spread of democracy, human
rights, and peace” given that free trade (on America’s part, not theirs) is today massively enriching
governments like that of China, enabling them to buy the bullets they need to oppress their own
peoples and menace their neighbors. And human rights? Under the WTO’s free-trade rules, the
sanctions imposed on South Africa in 1986 would now be illegal. And free trade has been the
origin of shooting wars for a long time : that’s how Hong Kong became British. Dan writes that
“U.S. companies and their workers cannot prosper in the long run without tapping into global markets.” This is unlikely
in light of the fact that corporate America and American workers were the world’s most successful in the 1950s and
1960s, when American exports were tiny in comparison to today. Dan denies that our trade deficit is a sign of trouble
on the grounds that it “reflects inflows of foreign capital.” This sounds good, but elides the fact that “inflows of foreign
capital” means either a) Americans accumulating debt to foreigners, or b) Existing American assets being sold off to
foreigners. Therefore it makes us a poorer nation by definition; this is a basic accounting identity. The rest of the hard
economics of Dan’s position appears to consist in counting up the (undenied) benefits of free trade, then assuming
that these benefits “must” surpass free trade’s costs because of economic logic that is either: a) simply assumed on
the grounds of libertarian ideology. or b) based on cartoonish oversimplifications of how real economies
outdated theories of trade that haven’t been updated since Ricardo’s 1817 theory of comparative
advantage, and a failure to acknowledge that free trade economics takes for granted certain factual
premises that are observably not true today.
work,
Economic globalization inspires militarism against all those
against the neoliberal project
Roberts, Secor and Sparke 2003 (Susan is the Professor and Chair Department of Geography, Anna is an assistant
professor at University Of Kentucky in the department of Geography and Matthew is a professor at the University of
Washington. “Neoliberal Geopolitics” 2003. http://faculty.washington.edu/sparke/neoliberalgeopolitics.pdf)
KENTUCKY
Armed with their simple master narrative about the inexorable force of economic globalization,
neoliberals famously hold that the global extension of free-market reforms will ultimately bring
worldwide peace and prosperity. Like Modernity and Development before it, Globalization is thus
narrated as the force that will lift the whole world out of poverty as more and more communities are
integrated into the capitalist global economy. In the most idealist accounts, such as those of New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman (1999:xviii), the process of marketized liberalization is represented as an almost natural
phenomenon which, “like the dawn,” we can appreciate or ignore, but not presume to stop. Observers and critics of
neoliberalism as an emergent system of global hegemony, however, insist on noting the many ways
in which states actively foster the conditions for global integration, directly or through international
organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization (Gill 1995).
Under what we are identifying as neoliberal geopolitics, there appears to have been a new
development in these patterns of state-managed liberalization. The economic axioms of structural
adjustment, fiscal austerity, and free trade have now , it seems, been augmented by the direct use of
military force . At one level, this conjunction of capitalism and war-making is neither new nor
surprising (cf Harvey 1985). Obviously, many wars—including most 19th- and 20th-century imperial wars—have
been fought over fundamentally economic concerns. Likewise, one only has to read the reflections of one of America’s
“great” generals, Major General Smedley Butler, to get a powerful and resonant sense of the long history of
economically inspired American militarism. “I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to
Major General,” Butler wrote in his retirement, [a]nd during that period, I spent most of that time being a high-class
muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. I helped make Honduras “right” for
American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil
interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to
collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit
of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of
Brown Brothers in 1909–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar inter- ests in 1916. In
China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. (quoted in Ali 2002:260). If it was engaged in a
kind of gangster capitalist interventionism at the previous fin-de-siècle, today’s American war-making
has been undertaken in a much more open, systematic, globally ambitious, and quasi-corporate
economic style. Al Capone’s approach, has, as it were, given way to the new world order of Jack Welch. To be sure,
the Iraq war was, in some respects, a traditional national, imperial war aimed at the
monopolization of resources . It was, after all, partly a war about securing American control over Iraqi oil.
Russia’s Lukoil and France’s TotalFinaElf will thereby lose out vis-à-vis Chevron and Exxon; more importantly, the
US will now be able to function as what Christian Parenti (2003) calls an “energy gendarme” over key oil supplies to
East Asia and Europe. Other, still more narrowly national circuits of American capitalism benefited from the war—
including, for example, Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney’s Halliburton that,
having helped the Pentagon orchestrate the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure, is now receiving generous contracts to
rebuild Iraqi infrastructure using proceeds from Iraq’s “liberated” oil sales. But these classically imperial aspects of the
hostilities are not our main focus here. Instead, our central concern is with how a neoliberal world vision has
served to obscure these more traditional geopolitics beneath Panglossian talk of global
integration and (what are thereby constructed as) its delinquent others . In the neoliberal
approach, the geopolitics of interimperial rivalry, the Monroe doctrine, and
the ideas about hemispheric
control that defined Butler’s era are eclipsed by a new global vision of almost infinite openness
and interdependency . In contrast also to the Cold War era, danger is no longer imagined as
something that should be contained at a disconnected distance. Now, by way of a complete
counterpoint,
danger is itself being defined as disconnection from the global system . In turn, the
neoliberal geopolitical response , it seems, is to insist on enforcing reconnection—or, as Friedman
(2003:A27) put it in an upbeat postwar column, “ aggressive engagement .” It would be wrong, of course, to
suggest that even this vision is brand new. Much like the broken neoliberal record of “globalization is inexorable,” the
vision can be interpreted as yet another cover for the century-old package of liberal development nostrums that critics
(eg Smith 2003) and apologists (eg Bacevich 2002) alike argue lie at the defining heart of “American
Empire.” But what distinguishes this moment of neoliberal geopolitics is that the notion of
enforced reconnection is today mediated through a whole repertoire of neoliberal ideas and
practices, ranging from commitments to market-based solutions and public-private partnerships to
concerns with networking and flexibility to mental maps of the planet predicated on a one-world
vision of interdependency. Thomas Barnett merely represents one particularly audacious and influential
embodiment of this trend.
2NC – Free Trade
Threats of production are constructed to justify the sovereign
state
Marcus
Ehn Handledare: Urban Strandberg, 2010, “Energy and the concept of security”, Doc, KENTUCKY
The economic sector of security is based upon on the relationship between “the political structure
of anarchy and the economic structure of the market” (Buzan et al., 1998, p95). Mercantilists put the
politics on the forefront where as liberals put economics first. The liberal ideal is the attrition of
national economies with their possible restrictions on the movement of goods and services (Buzan et al., 1998, p96).
The discourse of economic security therefore focuses on threats towards the liberal agenda
of free trade and the emergence of doubt regarding the stability of the market which could
disrupt the flow of goods . Specifically concerning if the dependencies made apparent through
the process of globalization could be exploited for political ends and if this can manifest itself
through concern regarding security of supply when referent objects abandon the idea of selfreliance (Buzan et al., 1998, p97-98). The liberal idea behind for instance the EU was that through the process of
interdependence no one nation would be able to independently mobilize or use trade as a political weapon.
Concerning the speech act the most apparent way of using securitization in regards to the
economic sector is to point to the possible collapse of welfare for the referent object which
in turn can lead to social unrest and eventually a breakdown of society (Buzan et al., 1998,
p102). In the economic sector states are actors with the greatest possibility of securitizing an issue by
pointing towards a threat against what can be seen as its basic needs. If the state is not self-reliant upon
all of its resources needed to maintain its societal structure, and the supply of one of these resources is threatened, then
the state can clearly and legitimately securitize an issue (Buzan et al., 1998, p105). For instance the EU can be
threatened existentially by something which threatens its process of interdependence through its construction of the
single market. The key issue in the economic sector is the stable supply of goods which means the fluctuations in
supply and demand are kept within certain limits and thereby preventing price shocks such as the oil crisis .
Protectionism can thereby for instance be seen as an existential threat towards the stability
of the market. Ways of combating this can be increasing institutional checks and balances which manage
fluctuations in the demand and supply of goods (Buzan et al., 1998, p107). The societal sector of security aim
differs from the traditional state view as a referent object and instead focuses on the dynamics of
the nation. Whereas political security focuses on the role of the state, societal security takes into
account the fact that throughout history there have rarely been homogenous national states
(although this also applies to heterogeneous states). In the security analysis regarding the societal
sector the key question concerns identity . In this case the securitization takes place when an
incident potentially could threaten the community and its identity (Buzan et al., 1998, p119). Usually
the collective identity of the community creates a sense of us versus them in regards to the
threat . When the nation is closely connected to the state, this speech act is often executed by
high ranking officials of the government (Buzan et al., 1998, p123).
instance feel threatened by what they perceive is
intrinsic values (Buzan et al., 1998, p137).
The identity in question could for
the cultural imperialism of the west on its
2NC – A2 – Lupovici
The aff has no internal link to this argument – its based on
nuclear deterrence not relative power status
We impact turn their methodology for deterrence – it
reproduces fear and orthodox solutions – makes extinction
inevitable – that’s Ahemd
Deterrence is a social construct – only the alternative creates
effective deterrence – the aff results in a break-down
Gallia M. Lindenstrauss Department of International Relations The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mount Scopus, Amir
AND Lupovici Munk Centre for International Studies University of Toronto 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto, Paper prepared for
presentation at the Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference, Vancouver, June 2008, “States, Ethnic Groups and
Deterrence: Achieving Some Restraint in Violent Ethnic Conflicts”, PDF, KENTUCKY
In the
more general deterrence literature, extended deterrence relationships between actors are
considered to be very problematic ,
extended deterrence may also fail for being too credible (2006: 624). Situations of
too much credibility may lead to a spiral process of escalation , since such kind of extended
either because of lack of credibility or because of too much credibility (Zagare and Kiglour 2006: 624). Thus, in contrast to direct deterrence, which in most cases is considered to be inherently credible, extended deterrence is perceived as less credible since the defender needs to demonstrate his willingness to employ his forces in
order to defend territories that are not his own. However, as Zagare and Kiglour contend,
deterrence might allow the protégé to take adventurous actions. 11
enmity between the sides affects the chances of
maintaining successful practices of deterrence.
enmity and
mutual hostility have destabilizing effects on deterrence strategy (Waltz 1995: 22; see also in Morgan,
2003: 57 ft. 16). As Guzzini for example suggests, when a deterrence policy is based on preparations for
the worst case scenario this scenario may become a self fulfilling prophecy (Guzzini 2004:
44). In this respect, some scholars refer to a paradox in the ability to attain successful deterrence,
since although armament and resolve increase the credibility of the threats , it fuels the conflict
In ethnic conflicts, especially ethnic conflicts in which the defender and the protégé have a common identity, such shared identity almost inherently
creates credibility, similar to the way direct deterrence works. Enmity and Deterrence The General Argument. A main issue that should be further integrated in the study of deterrence and ethnic conflicts is the question of how
This issue has received much attention during the Cold War and there was a debate around the question of whether hatred towards the opponent increases or decreases the chances of establishing successful deterrence relations. On the one hand, some scholars claim that hostility,
mistrust and suspicion are necessary for stable deterrence (Falk 1989: 65; Kahn 1962: 30; and in Buzan 1993: 31-2; see also in Guzzini 2004: 44).12 Thus, it was suggested that the deterrent threat will become more credible when there is enmity between the opponents. In such situations, the actors are less constrained in using their most powerful forces and their opponents are aware of this fact. On the other hand, other scholars contend that
and may contribute to a spiral escalation process (Stein 1985: 62; Tetlock 1987: 86; Quester 1998: 167172).13 In addition, some scholars
suggest that enmity or hostility may bring irrational and
incautious behavior and therefore may lead decision makers to disregard warnings and
threats, which might also hamper the chances of the success of deterrence (Carroll 1984: 5). As
Buzan suggests, “the
problem in a situation of high hostility is that the assumption of rationality
is weakened , because if hostility is extremely high, then irrational behavior , almost by
definition, becomes more plausible
.” (Buzan 1993: 31; See also in Morgan 2003: 60) In this respect, although it was asserted that deterrence was constructed as a non-emotional rational strategy (Cohn 1987), and although some scholars dispute the claim that deterrence is indeed non-emotional (Stein 2008 qut. in Adler, 2008: 15),14 still many scholars as well as
practitioners believe this is so. Following the questions raised with regard to the contribution of enmity to maintaining a deterrent posture, some scholars emphasize the importance of cooperation, trust and reassurance measures for a successful deterrence strategy (Schelling 1966: 259; Freedman 2004: 57; Stein 1991). The best example of cooperative practices that contribute to deterrence is the SALT agreements which were meant to enhance and stabilize the practices of mutual deterrence (Adler 1992; Evangelista 1999). Another
.
example, more limited in nature, is the ‘red lines’ agreement of 1996 between Israel and Hezbollah, according to which both sides would refrain from attacking civilian targets. Between Identity and Enmity
The question of enmity is especially interesting with regard to ethnic conflicts since some of the scholars contend that these conflicts revolve around mythical beliefs, and primordial hatreds. Moreover, it was suggested that most scholars agree that ...ethnic conflicts require at least three necessary and sufficient conditions;
economic, political or military threats to the identity and/or existence of the ethnic group (primordial attachments), an elite with the political skills and resources to play on those fears (instrumentalism), and third party military, political, or economic support for the cause (Harvey 2001: 119). Thus, although
the primordial explanation cannot
stand by itself to explain violence
despite the heavy criticism this explanation receives (see
Saha 2006: 5; Harvey 1997: 188), the existence of at least myths of past hatreds combined with the
in ethnic conflicts and
manipulation of these feelings by leaders , may bring actions that result in a violent conflict.
Enmity and hostility are also closely related to actors’ identities . It is widely accepted that
identity is characterized by the differentiation between the “self” and the “other” (
Katzenstein 1996: 22-4; Adler and Barnett 1998: 47; Wendt 1999: 224; Campbell 1998:
9; Tilly 1998: 402; see also Hopf 2002: 3-10). This difference not only creates the self but provides it with security. As Connolly suggests, “Identity requires differences in order to be, and it converts differences into otherness in order to secure its own- self certainty.” (Connolly 1991: 64) The importance of identity in explaining ethnic conflicts has been acknowledged by primordial as well as by constructivist scholars (e.g. Kaufman 2001).15
Constructivists emphasize that identities may be subject to manipulation and be socially
constructed .
despite the attention the study
of identities
literature on ethnic conflicts is quite silent regarding the connections between
deterrence and identity.
the
In this respect, this process may also be connected to ethnic symbolism (Kaufman 1998), and to the discourse of threat. As Hansen puts it, actors (states) are dependent on and constituted by external threats (Hansen 2006: 34) and this is even truer in the case of ethnic conflict. Nevertheless,
in ethnic conflict has gained, the
Surprisingly, interpretative scholars tend to neglect the study of deterrence in ethnic conflict although they have contributed both to the study of deterrence (e.g. Luke, 1989; Williams 1992) and to the study of ethnic conflicts (e.g. Arfi, 1998).16 In this respect, one of our main assertions in this paper is that
understanding of the practices of deterrence can be further improved by connecting it to
the study of identity (see also Lupovici 2008a; Lupovici 2008c).17 A good starting point to this
discussion is the acknowledgement of some constructivist scholars that enmity and
hostilities between actors affect their role identities .18 Moreover, practices of enmity may
become constitutive to actors, defining the basic identities of who they are
the
challenges for the Israelis and Palestinians is to get beyond the routines of enmity that have
(corporate identity in Wendt’s terms) (1999: 224). For example, Mitzen argues that one of
constituted and reproduced competitive practices that perpetuate their conflict, routines
that the parties prefer over the unknown new practices of peace (Mitzen 2006: 362-3). In other words,
hostility, enmity and threats help to constitute not only the role identities of the actors as
rivals and as enemies, but also their more basic identities.
chances of successfully maintaining practices of deterrence. On the one hand it seems that
There are some contradictory conclusions that can be drawn from this discussion and its connections to the debate on whether enmity or more cooperative relations among rivals increase the
since enmity may aggravate the threats and contribute to the spread of
mistrust and antagonism between the ethnic groups, deterrence is more likely to fail or be
irrelevant
with regard to ethnic conflicts. On the other hand, enmity may enhance the credibility of the deterrent threat and may justify extreme violent acts, which in turn may strengthen the deterrent posture. In addition, collective identity or enunciating a collective identity may help to enhance extended deterrence. In such cases the defender provides an 'ultimate' demonstration of his credibility by emphasizing his close relations with the protégé. That makes it clear for a potential
challenger that the defender's motivation stems from a fundamental affection, that solidifies the interests of the defender in defending his protégé and that it is not going to change in the near future. Thus, this argument is closely related to the emphasis Danilovic (2001: 347-9, 365) puts on the existence of strong interests of the interventionist side in order to demonstrate his resolve. When the protégé and patron share some similar identity characteristics, this is a strong indication for the existence of interests and therefore it may enhance
the credibility of the deterrent posture. Moreover, threats to identity and enmity between the actors may further enhance the credibility of the threats voiced in ethnic conflicts. Of course, this does not mean that deterrence will automatically work, and also should not bring us to downplay the importance of actors’ capabilities. However, it demonstrates the need to be more cautious regarding any general arguments about the effects of enmity on deterrence. The Context of Threats
Identities also influence the ability to maintain successful practices of deterrence by
influencing the context. Identities help in shaping the context that provides actors with tools to
understand and interpret reality. Certain identities that bring actors to feel secure or insecure
establish the context which determines their framing of what are security, insecurity and threats (
Hopf
2002: 1; see also Hansen 2006: 44; Lupovici 2008b: 11-6). As Hopf argues, Identities operate in ways reminiscent of other cognitive devices, such as scripts, schemas, and heuristics. What an individual understands himself to be... helps determine what information he apprehends and how he uses it. In this view, an individual’s identity acts like an axis of interpretation, implying that she will find in the external world what is relevant to that identity (Hopf 2002: 5). In other words, since
deterrence is dependent on the social constructions of actors, such as the construction of
“threat” and of “security,19 it is argued that deterrence is dependent not only on actors’
capabilities but on common knowledge that the deterrer and the deterred actor share (
need of an ideational context in which the threat can be interpreted as being part of a
deterrence strategy.
In such situations, extreme past violent
events may become part of what constitutes the victim’s identity (
)21 and shapes the
context of the relations between them.
. In other words,
although such events (and the way they shape the identity) may lead the victim to want revenge
(and therefore general deterrence will not work), should a crisis erupt, the victimizers may take
advantage of that event and may use it as a precedent that presents their past and potential
capabilities and their credibility in order to achieve immediate deterrence. Thus, the context and
Lupovici 2007, see also
Adler 2008).20 In this respect, there is a
Thus, such a context does not only revolve around actors’ knowledge regarding capabilities, but it is also about the actors’ more general knowledge (a construction) regarding each other.
and most likely also the victimizer’s identity
As such, not only does it further fuel and maintain the hostility and the hatred, but the victim’s enunciators may remind their audience of the unacceptable cost and consequences of past events
the way identity is formed have an important part in initiating as well as interpreting the
threats and the way they affect the credibility .
In this respect
, acknowledging the
importance of the
context may help to explain the paradox according to which fear is a necessary condition for
ethnic war because people are usually “mobilizable only when confronted by some threat”
however fear also stands at the heart of deterrence practices, which means that fear may provide a mechanism for avoidance of violence
.
(Kaufman 1998: 4-5),
Thus, fear and threats should be understood as part of the actors’
identities and the social context which gives meaning to “fear”.
(Kaufman 1998: 5). In this respect, what Kaufman is suggesting is that
As Kaufman himself suggests, “The fear comes not from what the other group does, but from one group’s feelings and expectations regarding the other group”
the group’s identity helps to interpret the threat and therefore, as suggested
earlier, an extreme violent act in the past may encourage revenge, but for the same reason
may restrain immediate willingness to use force.